Windows Explorer identified as malware

Windows Explorer, one of the most crucial components of Microsoft's operating system, was quarantined last week after being falsely identified as malicious code by an antivirus company.

Users of Kaspersky Lab's antivirus products noticed the issue, which Kaspersky claimed lasted two hours, on last week. The security company's systems had decided that a virus called Huhk-C was present in the explorer.exe file, leading to its confinement or, in some cases, deletion. As Windows Explorer is the graphical user interface for Windows' file system, this made it difficult to perform many common tasks within the operating system, such as finding files.

David Emm, a senior technology consultant at Kaspersky Lab, told ZDNet Australia sister site ZDNet UK on Friday that the company was still examining its checklist to find out why the false positive "slipped through the net".

"This is classic false alarm territory," Emm said. "We will check through our systems and see if we can tighten them up so we don't run into this problem in the future. No antivirus company, including ourselves, can say they have never had a false alarm, [but] on all fronts, we do what we can to minimise any potential risk for our customers."

The "offending signature" went out at around 7 pm on Wednesday, according to Emm, who claimed that it was pulled two hours later in a "makeshift" attempt to limit the damage while Kaspersky examined the signature.