Critical! AVAST (and AVG) are stopping video streams from local USB cameras

system · 2017-05-05T20:04:13.000Z

Hi there, I am the author of the OBS Project, an open source video compositing/capturing/streaming/recording tool with a few million users.

The other day, I released (or was going to release) a new update for my software, version 18.0.2. When I sent out the update, webcams and capture devices mysteriously stopped working completely for everyone on Avast and AVG. After a lot of debugging, I determined that my new executable would cause Avast to block webcams and video devices completely. If I moved my old 18.0.1 executable back over that version, they would start working again. I did have to renew my code signing certificate with 18.0.2, so that may have triggered Avast/AVG to block them prematurely. I had to turn off my auto-update and roll back to 18.0.1 for my users.

“Disable for one hour” does not work (edit: apparently passive mode does?) – but I don’t care about disable/passive mode so much, this feature or bug really needs to be fixed or removed from Avast/AVG.

If Avast/AVG blocking video devices is a bug, this needs to be fixed ASAP because I am unable to make updates to my software while this is happening, and clearly it’s affecting medical software as well.

If Avast/AVG are now by design intentionally blocking webcams and video devices of non-whitelisted code certs or (even worse) non-whitelisted executable hashes, then this is a very poor design decision that is going to cause a lot of problems for a lot of people and have major unintended consequences. Medical software as described above are now at your mercy if they want to be functional on a computer with Avast/AVG installed. Again this is an extremely poor design decision. Please, we beg of you, revert this change and stop trying to block video devices if this is the case. It invokes very strong emotions with me.

Right now I am waiting for whitelisting in the mean time, but currently have had no response. We’ve tried several avenues to try to get in contact and explain the problem with no feedback. Please I beg of you – fix this problem. Do not do this.

Please, I beg of you, have mercy on those of us and your users whose livelihoods are so heavily dependent on video capture devices functioning properly. Stop blocking video capture devices.

system · 2017-05-05T20:44:39.000Z

Jim from OBS, thank you for your support in this matter! Note that the AVG forums are beginning to get more posts regarding the issue: https://support.avg.com/answers?id=906b0000000DlYyAAK.

system · 2017-05-06T08:02:10.000Z

My users found how to resolved this problem:

Hi Viktor

Yep, uninstalling Avast fixed the problem. In a way I’m glad that it turned out to be that simple. If I’d had to go back to a restore point, I would have had to re-install a lot of software.

Thanks very much

John

What do i must tell my users?

system · 2017-05-06T09:12:55.000Z

Official answer of AVG: Temporarily to run AVG in the Passive mode.

https://support.avg.com/answers?id=906b0000000DjznAAC

This is true and for Avast too. For run in the Passive mode you need make the following operations:

Call the Avast control window
Run Settings
Click on Troubleshooting
Find the Passive mode and turn on it
Restart PC.

igor0 · 2017-05-06T20:20:36.000Z

Would you have download links for the affected software (other than the three mentioned on this page)?
Thanks.

system · 2017-05-06T20:27:21.000Z

igor post:25:

Would you have download links for the affected software (other than the three mentioned on this page)?
Thanks.

Hi there Igor, here you go:

https://github.com/jp9000/obs-studio/releases/tag/18.0.2

That’s our 18.0.2 version. Just as a note, for 18.0.2 we have a new recently-renewed code signing certificate on the executables and installer. I apologize if I got a bit heated. This situation is just really stressful for me at the moment. I would really prefer it if webcams are not being blocked by anti-virus software. I hope it’s a bug and not intentional. I really need this situation resolved for my users because as of right now I cannot release new versions of my software without major problems for my users.

Thank you for responding, I really appreciate it.

(EDIT: oh I apologize if you weren’t referring to my software, I’m just really frustrated and hope this situation gets resolved)

system · 2017-05-07T06:22:35.000Z

OmniJoin is one of the programs that have been blocked by this. I believe you can get a 14-day trial of OmniJoin v7 here: http://www.brothercloud.com/omnijoin/VideoConference/

pk · 2017-05-07T15:56:47.000Z

It seems there was a problem with some webcam apps which avast could block. This will be fixed with a VPS update on Tuesday. It didn’t affect well-known webcam apps (Skype, …), but only new/uncommon webcam apps, this was caused by a bug in our rating system.

system · 2017-05-07T16:07:36.000Z

The issue is caused by the exe displaying the video not being signed. I downloaded a shareware AmCap from here http://noeld.com/programs.asp?cat=video
As installed, it works.

I used the Reshacker (resource editor) to remove the version information resource from amcap.exe which invalidated the signature. After that, it stopped working if AVAST is enabled and works if Avast is in Passive mode.

system · 2017-05-08T03:00:25.000Z

I also have this problem but with a BlackGold BGT3620 TV card rather than a webcam. I use a program called DV Scheduler which suddenly stopped recording. The TV card tunes a frequency but does not output any data.

I tried to use the TV Card with some other software, some work and some have the same issue. Eg. MPC-HC (https://mpc-hc.org/) works fine but Mediaportal (https://www.team-mediaportal.com/) does not.

Uninstalling AVAST fixes the issue completely.

chris... · 2017-05-08T09:41:35.000Z

Hi,
I think any components that can make captures are likely to encounter problems with avast.
Finally, rather the programs (signatures) of these devices.
As we can see here and on the forums of other languages, there are quite a number of relevant devices (TV tuner, webcam, alarms, …)
Let’s wait for tomorrow’s update.

NON · 2017-05-08T11:54:29.000Z

pk post:28:

It seems there was a problem with some webcam apps which avast could block. This will be fixed with a VPS update on Tuesday. It didn’t affect well-known webcam apps (Skype, …), but only new/uncommon webcam apps, this was caused by a bug in our rating system.

Thanks for the comment, pk. I’ll test with my own web-camera tomorrow.

suk · 2017-05-09T10:15:34.000Z

The issue with blocking [some] webcam programs was fixed in the latest virus definition update.
Can you let us know if it fixed your issues? Some people reported that the issue was in streaming (which we couldn’t reproduce) rather than viewing the video, so I just want to make sure we’ve covered all these aspects.

Thank you for reporting all these details, it really helped to diagnose the problem,
Pavel

system · 2017-05-09T12:48:22.000Z

Thank you for your response. This has been fixed in OmniJoin.

system · 2017-05-09T14:10:22.000Z

Latest VSP update fixed our videophone software’s local screen issue as well. Many thanks.

system · 2017-05-09T16:15:50.000Z

Problem is fixed with the latest update.

system · 2017-05-09T19:22:05.000Z

Getting reports that it appears to be fixed with OBS Studio as well. I apologize for getting worked up earlier. Thank you very much for fixing the problem and communicating.

system · 2017-05-11T20:39:23.000Z

Does anyone know if this has been fixed for iSpy? This has caused a major issue for iSpy users.
There was a CRITICAL thread on iSpy about this aswell.

I have completely removed AVAST and I was about to go the Zone Alarm Antivirus way (since I already had the ZA firewall) - it was almost time to say goodbye to AVAST forever after all this years - since this issue was just incredibly serious for me.

Please let me know if its fixed for iSpy and then I will re-install AVAST - otherwise I dare not risk.
Thanks

DavidR · 2017-05-11T21:40:47.000Z

maplejosh post:38:

Does anyone know if this has been fixed for iSpy? This has caused a major issue for iSpy users.
There was a CRITICAL thread on iSpy about this aswell.

I have completely removed AVAST and I was about to go the Zone Alarm Antivirus way (since I already had the ZA firewall) - it was almost time to say goodbye to AVAST forever after all this years - since this issue was just incredibly serious for me.

Please let me know if its fixed for iSpy and then I will re-install AVAST - otherwise I dare not risk.
Thanks

See Reply #32 above https://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=201702.msg1392597#msg1392597.

system · 2017-05-11T22:32:34.000Z

OK. I will re-install and try iSpy tomorrow. The reason I asked is because I assumed, maybe wrongly, that AVAST is trying to block spyware from secretly monitoring your webcam device - thus they created a white list of “allowed” software that can use the USB Capture device. I thought maybe they thought they have fixed it by just adding softwares mentioned in the complaints, to their white list. Thus was my question whether iSpy is on that white list?
What I am hoping then is that they have completely removed the AVAST capability to block ANY application from accessing the webcam.
Hey AVAST guys, I hope you have learned from this episode…its been disastrous and I don’t understand why you did not see this coming? I wasted many days and precious hours. We were all going mad in the iSpy forums until someone in there pointed us towards AVAST / AVG forums. The absolute LEAST that you should have done is stick on a warning on your homepage about this problem or ensure that everyone using AVAST suddenly gets some sort of message/popup in their software telling them about this nasty issue. It shouldn’t have been for me to waste my time and come hunting for you.

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