Sophos antivirus is blocking git.exe after too many uploads from PsychoPy to Pavlovia

I’ve been working on an online task for the last days and I’ve been synching my task from PsychoPy to Pavlovia quite often. However, after a while I got this error

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Program Files\PsychoPy\lib\site-packages\psychopy\app\builder\builder.py", line 1374, in onPavloviaSync
    pavlovia_ui.syncProject(parent=self, file=self.filename, project=self.project)
  File "C:\Program Files\PsychoPy\lib\site-packages\psychopy\app\pavlovia_ui\project.py", line 777, in syncProject
    committed = functions.showCommitDialog(parent, project, initMsg="", infoStream=dlg.status)
  File "C:\Program Files\PsychoPy\lib\site-packages\psychopy\app\pavlovia_ui\functions.py", line 94, in showCommitDialog
    changeDict, changeList = project.getChanges()
  File "C:\Program Files\PsychoPy\lib\site-packages\psychopy\projects\pavlovia.py", line 1058, in getChanges
    changeDict['untracked'] = self.repo.untracked_files
  File "C:\Program Files\PsychoPy\lib\site-packages\psychopy\projects\pavlovia.py", line 899, in repo
    self._repo = self.newRepo()
  File "C:\Program Files\PsychoPy\lib\site-packages\psychopy\projects\pavlovia.py", line 963, in newRepo
    repo = git.Repo.init(self.localRoot)
  File "C:\Program Files\PsychoPy\lib\site-packages\git\repo\base.py", line 1046, in init
    git.init(**kwargs)
  File "C:\Program Files\PsychoPy\lib\site-packages\git\cmd.py", line 638, in <lambda>
    return lambda *args, **kwargs: self._call_process(name, *args, **kwargs)
  File "C:\Program Files\PsychoPy\lib\site-packages\git\cmd.py", line 1183, in _call_process
    return self.execute(call, **exec_kwargs)
  File "C:\Program Files\PsychoPy\lib\site-packages\git\cmd.py", line 983, in execute
    raise GitCommandError(redacted_command, status, stderr_value, stdout_value)
git.exc.GitCommandError: Cmd('C:\Program Files\PsychoPy\MinGit\cmd\git.exe') failed due to: exit code(1)
  cmdline: C:\Program Files\PsychoPy\MinGit\cmd\git.exe init
  stderr: 'C:/Users/ccnlab/Experiments/PEDUKS_v1/facesTask/Pilot Task/peduks_faces_online_pilot/.git: Permission denied'

Apparently the Sophos antivirus on this laptop is now blocking git.exe and I can’t synch my task to Pavlovia anymore.

Has anyone else encountered this problem before? Why does Sophos see git.exe as ransomware?

How have you been syncing with Pavlovia? The expected route is to use the sync button within PsychoPy Builder.

Yes, I did it through the sync button within the PsychoPy Builder.

Not here but I just Googled git.exe ransomware and found a few cases of AV packages identifying it as a false positive. I use Sophos myself and sync a lot but it hasn’t happened to me.

You could try contacting Sophos, or just see what happens if you click on “resolve”.

When I click ‘resolve’ it asks me for the admin sign in for sophos which I don’t have… I will contact the IT department and ask about this.
In the meantime I’m using another device to sync my tasks.

I was just curious if other people experienced this problem.

Thank you! :slight_smile:

I’m curious too. I couldn’t see anything similar on this forum.

I’ve now been hit with this myself.

Syncing with Pavlovia was flagged as ransomware based on behaviour, but a signature-based malware scan didn’t detect anything.

I was syncing a lot and I think it encrypts the files before sending them, so the behaviour was seen as a lot of files being encrypted in a short amount of time, which looked like ransomware.

My university’s IT services are needing to add PsychoPy as an exception to Sophos.