Antivirus false positive

Question

I'm adding new features to an old Borland C++ VCL application using Borland 2006 IDE.

I'm finding that upon adding a single line of code, and building, the exe is being quarantined since Sophos is detecting it as a virus/spyware - Squatter-310 to be exact. If I remove the line then the application builds as expected or if I add the "line" to another routine then it also builds.

Can anyone shed some light as to why this could be the case?

More Info:

The single line of code being added is simply setting the caption of an action from an array which has been loaded with various strings. The index of the array being accessed is within bounds of the array.

Answer 1

Anti Malware systems don't know whether the code you write is in bounds or not, something in your compiled code matches a signature in your anti-virus, hence the alert. You haven't written anything malicious, it's just a coincidence. You could try different compile flags (not sure about how to do that with Borland), or simply restructure your code a bit and the problem will likely go away.