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R is a virus, spyware or malware (gasp!)

5 messages · Philippe GROSJEAN, Ioannis Dimakos, Peter Dalgaard +2 more

Original
Ioannis Dimakos
# 
Of course it's a virus.  Once you catch the virus, you feel this rush,
this fever to abandon all other statistical packages.

On a more serious note, though, the size of the RGUI.exe file as reported
in the webpage is not even near close to the actual size of the R
distribution exe pack.

I

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On Sun, May 18, 2008 17:30, Philippe Grosjean wrote:

  
    

      
      
    

  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      Peter Dalgaard
    

    

      
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Ioannis Dimakos wrote:

            

      
      
      
    

        
Hmm, the installed Rgui.exe in 2.7.0rc (which is all I have, under Wine 
on a Fedora machine) appears to be 27648 bytes, which is one of the 
cited numbers.

Presumably something needs to be done...

            

      
      
      
    

        

      
      
    

            

      
      
      
    

        

  
    

      
      
    

  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      Tony Plate
    

    

      
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And the installed Rgui.exe in 2.6.2 is 10240 bytes, which is 
their "most common file size."

They also say (fill in your own comments...):

 > RGUI.EXE has been seen to perform the following behavior(s):
 >
 >     * Can communicate with other computer systems using 
HTTP protocols
 >     * This Process Creates Other Processes On Disk
 >     * This Process Deletes Other Processes From Disk
 >     * Executes a Process
 >     * The Process is packed and/or encrypted using a 
software packing process
 >     * Accesses the MS Outlook Address Book

and

 > What you should do about RGUI.EXE:
 >
 > Check Your PC Now
 > The most common objects with the name of RGUI.EXE have 
yet to be classified as safe by our research department.

So, I suspect that they don't actually classify it as a 
virus, they just haven't classified it as safe...  (I 
couldn't see any email contact address on their web page.)

-- Tony Plate

        
Peter Dalgaard wrote:

            

      
      
      
    

        

      
      
    

            

      
      
      
    

  
  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      Daniel Nordlund
    

    

      
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I looked at the home website and found a contact form which someone could use to inform the company of the error of their ways.

http://www.prevx.com/contactus.asp

I will leave it to those who may be better equipped to deal with any replies from the company to contact them.

Dan

Daniel Nordlund
Bothell, WA USA