What to do when Avast detects a threat in a harmless application?

Some anti-virus programs consider that an application is a potential threat when the developer does not sign the application with a digital key.

Try adding a key to your project and make sure the problem persists.

For example, you can see how to digitally sign a project through Visual Studio on that page:

  

VB 2005 - Signing Assemblies with Strong Names

     

When you build a .NET project in Visual Studio 2005 it is compiled in the form of an assembly. By default this assembly is open and has no security to assure application users that they are using the correct binary file version.

     

You work around this problem by signing your assembly by assigning a 'strong name' to the compiled application or component which can thus be uniquely identified by other applications and system administrators who can then apply a policy security for the application. So you can ensure that a name is globally unique by signing an assembly with a strong name.

     

Before directly showing how you can sign your assemblies, making them more secure and reliable, let's look at some basics like Global Assembly Cache and strongly named assemblies.