It turns out that Microsoft Defender mistakenly detects a text file with the text 'This content is no longer available' as a 'serious threat' and deletes it



Windows comes with Microsoft Defender, an antivirus software developed by Microsoft, which is said to provide powerful virus protection for general users without the need for a third-party security suite. However, a bug has been discovered in Microsoft Defender that causes it to treat certain text files as serious threats.

Microsoft Defender flags text file containing 'This content is no longer available.' as a severe threat | Tom's Hardware
https://www.tomshardware.com/software/antivirus/microsoft-defender-flags-text-file-containing-this-content-is-no-longer-available-as-a-severe-threat

Engineer yappy reported on X (formerly Twitter) that Microsoft Defender was malfunctioning due to a text file containing the message 'This content is no longer available.'



According to yappy, when Microsoft Defender detects a text file containing the text line 'This content is no longer available.' or 'This content is no longer available!', it flags the text file as a Trojan horse and deletes it from the system. This process is done quickly regardless of the file name, so on the surface it appears to be 'protected from potential 'serious threats'.'

Yappy initially speculated that the false positive was a collision in the cryptographic hash function SHA-256 .



However, other X users pointed out that this was not a SHA-256 hash collision, but rather that a text file containing that line of text was uploaded to a malware database.



In fact, other security software did not detect it as a Trojan horse, and the false positives were a problem specific to Microsoft Defenders.



'The bug isn't that serious. The text itself doesn't pose a threat to Windows 11, and changing the punctuation, adding a space at the end, or adding other text will eliminate the false positives,' said Tom's Hardware, an IT news site.

However, if you need to save a text file that contains the line 'This content is no longer available.' or 'This content is no longer available!', the file may be deleted unless you specify the save destination as an exception directory for Microsoft Defender scanning.

At the time of writing, the bug has not been fixed. Yappy responded to the official Windows X account on X, saying, 'fix yo shit.'



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