Virustotal scan - Multiple flags as malware

[Ak9sor]

Hi, first of all, thank you for your work on Kardi Notes. I really appreciate the focus on privacy and simplicity and have been using it on my phone for a long time.

I wanted to let you know that after downloading the kardi notes.exe file from the official site (https://www.kardi.tech) and scanning it on VirusTotal, I received multiple malware alerts from over 30 antivirus engines, including:

• Microsoft Defender: Program:Win32/Wacapew.C!ml
• BitDefender, Avast, AVG: Gen:Variant.Lazy.422261 / Win32:MalwareX-gen [Drp]
• Malwarebytes: Generic.Malware.AI.DDS
• DrWeb, ESET-NOD32, CrowdStrike, Sophos, SentinelOne, and others

Some detections mention trojans (Trojan.MSIL, MulDrop), ransomware (Ransom.Win32.STOP.tr!n), or suspicious packers (Packed.Appacker.A).

Could this be a false positive due to the way the executable is packed?

I’d really appreciate it if you could confirm whether this is a known issue or possibly upload a clean version of the .exe.

[rikodot]

Hello, yes you are correct, this is a false positive due to the packer (Appacker), which I use for making windows portable exe.
Flutter produces multiple files (exe and assets) and I pack them into a singular exe. I could fix this if I buy a signing certificate, but due to lack of funds, I dont see this happening any time soon. Sorry.
I have very limited free times nowadays, but I do plan on changing the packer, the problem is even if I made my own packer, it would still be flagged as malware. Any time any unsigned exe creates assets and exe (essentially unpacking the app), some AVs will flag it.
You can compile the source code yourself to be absolutely sure, but I understand it is not an easy task.

Already explained previously in this issue.

If you want to be absolutely sure, you can contact me and I will send you the unpacked files, it is an exe and couple assets, which if you put into the same folder, the app will work, without being packed. Problem is you would need new files for each update, but it is possible. Unpacked files have no flags on virustotal.

Thank you for your interest, if you have any further questions, feel free to contact me here or privately on my email, which you can find on the official kardi website, I will be happy to answer any questions.