Services.exe I need the truth.

[Minecrafter]

Is services.exe a virus? I scanned my computer with Avira premium, And malware bytes on that file, Returns as safe, I upload it to virus total, Safe, But when I look it up on the internet, It says its a virus. And my friends tell me its a virus to. So I need a little help.

[David H. Lipman]

You mean "Is services.exe malware?"

Viruses are a specific type of self replicating malware.

 

The truth is; any file, malware or legitimate, can be named anything.

 

Can the legitimates MS OS file services.exe be infected with a file infecting virus or be trojanized (aka; patched) ?  Yes.

 

Can a trojan be named services.exe ?  Again, Yes.

 

The fact is the name of a file does not count because any file, malware or legitimate, can be named anything.  What IS important is the Fully Qualified Name and Path (FQNP) of a given file.

 

So lets look at..

c:\Windows\system32\services.exe

That is the legitimate OS file and its path.

 

If you were to find the following, it is NOT legitimate and is most likely a trojan as that is NOT the legitimate location of the OS file.

c:\Windows\system32\drivers\services.exe

 

Now lets look at the legitimate file

c:\Windows\system32\services.exe

 

That file can be infected with a file infecting virus or it can be trojanized.  In that case malware has prepended, appended or cavity injected malicious code into the legitimate file.  If that happens, two things will take place.  The first is the file size will increase and the second is the file's Chedksum value will be altered.

 

So your question and the results via a Google Search are voided by not providing the correct information to get the correct answer.

[Minecrafter]

As I said, I scanned the file, No malware on it =) Thanks for the help! I feel a lot better now.