winmerge-2.16.48.2-x64-exe.zip, jq.exe and tidy.exe recognized as trojan by some antivirus. Virustotal scan

[Emilius256]

Hello,

I just downloaded winmerge-2.16.48.2-x64-exe.zip and did a scan witt virustotal and it marked as trojan by 2 antivirus.

It seems that jq.exe and tidy.exe are the only files recognized as Trojan

The strange things is that if I scan an older versione of Winmerge with jq.exe and tidy.exe with the same version a don't give any alert. May I replace jq.exe and tidy.exe with a newer versione downloaded respectevly from the developer site or from an older winmerge zip file ?

Many Thanks

[sdottaka]

I compared the jq.exe and tidy.exe files from WinMerge version 2.16.48.2 with those from version 2.16.42.1 released in July 2024. Although the file timestamps are different, the SHA-256 hashes are identical. So, replacing them likely won’t avoid the antivirus detections.

The ZIP file of version 2.16.42.1 was scanned on VirusTotal about two months ago. After reanalyzing it now, it shows the same detection results as version 2.16.48.2.

I’ve contacted the two antivirus vendors to report these as potential false positives. Hopefully, the issue will be resolved in a future update.

[Emilius256]

Thank you for your reply.

[sdottaka]

Zillya has resolved the previous false positive, as shown in the link below: https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/1c87bae8cf1af3612a905fd6ceb86a02ce25f8acc44a21b8356b26e9f8567ef2