pafish detected as malware / virus

[a0rtega]

Opening this issue to keep it pinned for future reference, as it is a recurring problem.

Why does my antivirus detect pafish?

pafish is a security research tool and although it does not perform any malicious action on the system, some antivirus vendors detect it as malware / potentially unwanted application (PUP). There are many possible reasons for this, one of them being that actual malware took some of the code and adapted it for their malicious intent.

What can the project do about it?

We can not do much about it, as we do not have control over the antivirus vendors decisions.

If your Internet browser detects the project website as malicious or phishing, it is almost certainly caused by Google Safe Browsing. In this case, you can report the project website as a false positive. Please do, we appreciate any help in this regard!

What can the users do about it?

If you want to use pafish but the antivirus blocks it, you will have to temporarily disable the protection or add an exclusion to allow it to run.