[steelframe]

My company's malware detection crap on my work laptop once scanned a PDF of a security research paper I was reading for my project, found a link to a web site with malware on it because that's what the research was about, and then it summarily deleted the PDF to "protect" the company from that link.

[TwoBit]

Well it wasn't entirely wrong. Just because the doc was about malware doesn't mean somebody won't accidentally click it.

[Spivak]

I mean how is the security scanner supposed to know that you’re working on a project which is super specific edge case?

I mean almost all of the time that PDF will be malware designed to trick the reader into clicking that link and it did the right thing.

[archie2]

Most security scanners allow you to create exclusion folders, where it doesn't scan files in those folders. Something somebody researching malware on a company computer with a malware detector should probably be aware of.

[RaiseProfits]

Presumably by disabling it on the workstations of security researchers. Or just the feature that flags linked content rather than content itself.