Suspicious whitespace sequence

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

Hi I am new to forums so please be patient.

I just received an email and Avast gave me this message “Suspicious whitespace sequence”.

Is it a virus?
Is it safe to open this email?

Is it possible to stop this message in avast and if so will I still be safe from viruses.

2

It’s not necessarily a virus, but a suspicious way of hiding an infected file like this.

FileName.txt                                                                                              .exe

The name is so big that you don’t see it completely and it could be a virus.
Did you trust in the source of this email?
You can configure avast behavior in the two Heuristic tab of settings of Internet Mail provider and/or Outlook plugin.

3

Hi Tech
Thanks for your help.

Yes I trust the email source but that dose not mean that the email is virus free.

I took a chance and allowed the email and it seemed OK, read it and there was no attachment.

Did a complete virus scan with avast and no infection.

All I could see in the email is that the
Subject: Fw: PCFA : unclassified - I HOPE THE BABY DANCES FOR YOU] has a lot of spaces in it.
I then sent this email back to myself and avast gave me the same message as before Suspicious whitespace sequence.

Thanks for your support and for this very helpful forum. I’m sure I’ll be visiting it again so that I can get the most benefits out of Avast which I have been using for nearly 2 years!
I had a thought and edited the email Subject to Subject: I HOPE THE BABY DANCES FOR YOU and then sent this email to myself. No more avast warning message.

I also played around with your suggestion in Avast in Internet Mail I set sensitivity slider to Custom and clicked on Customize, then Heuristics tab then clicked on Customize and changed Maximum admissible length of sequence from the default 5 to 6. This also fixed the problem when I sent the original email to myself.

I hope that this helps others with this email problem but be wary of emails with attachments.

Thanks for your support and for the very helpful forum too. I’m sure I’ll be visiting it again so that I can get the most out of Avast which I have been using for about 2 years!

4

I see… the white space sequence is on the Subject line and not in the attached file name… sorry, my mistake.