Hi all,
yesterday my Avast Premium Security v25.2.9898a (build 25.2.9898.919)
popped up a warning because a running Boinc project, Asteroid At Home,
was trying to access a .pdf file that has nothing to do with Boinc or AAH itself.

This pdf is also stored in a different disk, in a folder monitored by Avast, as I marked it
as a "sensitive" folder. Every access to these files by an unauthorized program is blocked.
Running an Avast scan against the folder D:\Programmi\BOINC doesn't trigger any virus warning.

Question:
why that Asteroids At Home project tried to access this file, despite it being totally unrelated to Boinc?

The offending application full path is this:
D:\Programmi\BOINC\ProgramData\projects\asteroidsathome.net_boinc\period_search_10220_windows_x86_64__win10.exe

How to deal with this warning? Is it safe to let it run or not?
By now I stopped all Boinc activity.

Does anyone have experienced something like this.
Best regards!
Andrea from Italy

the stock application does not do this.

you have an infection that has compromised or even replaced the asteroids binary file with an imposter.

I would reset the project to delete this file and download a new file from the project.

I would also suggest a thorough virus scan of the system

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Could you share the exact message or a screenshot of the warning you're getting? Perhaps you misinterpreted it.

Avast does not identify the stock app as a threat.
https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/f49671fd6c0c9d293896b30a8ccc1b961c8fa1573ad90caf8155475d69899143/detection
The app is not accessing any files unrelated to BOINC or .pdf files on its own.

If your PC is already infected, some viruses may spread to any file they can access, including the Asteroids binary or other originally safe apps like your web browser, Windows internals, etc.