My project was detected as a virus

[Mrflower3355]

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Hello first i was working on a project that see if your password is strong or no and try to guess it i made it with Gemini that was my second project when learning python
my password guesser project when i did make it exe with pyinstaller the second day windows said it is trojan
and here is my project

cracker_app.py
If you can help me why to know why windows says its a virus that will help alot for my school project

[Shur0v]

when using PyInstaller, Windows often flags custom Python executables as false positives. Make sure your script doesn’t include suspicious names like “crack” or “password”.
Use a clean virtual environment and rebuild with pyinstaller --onefile --noconsole yourscript.py

[mezoni]

avoid suspicious keywords in filenames

What does suspicious keywords in file names mean?
Is there a list? Or did you come up with all this yourself?

[doguozgen]

By suspicious keywords i mean words that antivirus engines commonly associate with malware. They don’t actually make your code malicious it’s just that antivirus heuristics flag anything that looks like malware based on names or patterns. For example, if your script or folder includes terms like crack, hack, password, keygen, license, bypass, inject, stealer, or encryptor, even if they’re harmless, PyInstaller executables built from them can trigger false positives.

It’s not actually an official list each antivirus has its own heuristics but these are known to cause issues from experience and reports. So it’s more of a best practice guideline than a hard rule. So yes you kinda have to come up with all of these yourself Actually.

[Mrflower3355]

@doguozgen
wait what do you mean by "sign your executables with a key if possible."
i dont know how to do that and i am always up to date with py updates rn in py-14

[doguozgen]

When I said “sign your executables with a key,” I meant digitally signing your .exe file so windows and antivirus software know it’s from a verified source. It’s mostly used for public releases. You get a code signing certificate (for example, from Digicert, Sectigo, or Microsofts developer program) and use tools like signtool.exe (which you already have on your pc built into the Windows SDK) or (osslsigncode) to attach your signature.

Unsigned executables are more likely to be flagged by Windows SmartScreen or antivirus. Since you’re already keeping PyInstaller up to date, that’s great just keep building from a clean environment, and you’ll be fine unless you plan to distribute your app widely.

For example if you lets suppose you have this file called myapp.py right? You convert it to a binary executable through pyInstaller like this pyinstaller --onefile myapp.py and you have a file called myapp.exe right now.

Lets suppose you don’t want to buy a certificate and you create one locally (do it only for testing etc...)

Create a self-signed certificate with powershell
powershell -Command "New-SelfSignedCertificate -Type CodeSigningCert -Subject 'CN=MyTestCert' -CertStoreLocation Cert:\CurrentUser\My

Export it to a .pfx file
powershell -Command "Get-ChildItem Cert:\CurrentUser\My | Where-Object { $_.Subject -match 'MyTestCert' } | Export-PfxCertificate -FilePath 'C:\mytestcert.pfx' -Password (ConvertTo-SecureString -String 'test123' -Force -AsPlainText)

Then you sign that exe like this

signtool sign /f "C:\mytestcert.pfx" /p "test123" /fd sha256 "dist\myapp.exe

of course you have to change the paths and tweak the names of everything a little bit to make it work but you get the general idea

[Mrflower3355]

Oh okay and the exe files will be only locally so no other person will use it expect me but i will use the .py files to get my school project done but thanks to know that might help me in the future

[doguozgen]

You are welcome man hope you get a good grade, rootin for yaa