Google Drive and Gmail detect viruses on .ma files

[Anonymous]

Hello, 

I've been sharing files via Google Drive and within the last few weeks, any .ma file I upload is unable to be downloaded because it says it contains a virus. If I try to attach the file to a Gmail email, it says there's a virus and cannot be attached. I'm using Maya 2020.4.

When I'm working with the files on my machine, I don't notice anything odd or strange. I ran a Windows defender scan on my machine and no viruses are detected. 

The workaround is saving as a .mb and reuploading. 

Has anyone else run into this issue? How can I fix my .ma files from having an issue where Gmail/Drive says a virus is detected? 

Thanks!

[hamsterHamster]

Many kinds of viruses are NOT designed to make their presence obvious.

Maya scene files can contain malicious code that might make Maya unusable at certain dates, until then just infect files in hopes that you will pass them to unaware friends and colleagues. See the Forum section dedicated.to this issue.

MA are open text files, where it is easy to detect any malicious script code, while MB are "compressed" to binary code, where the code is impossible to detect without opening the file.

I'd suggest disabling Automatic Script Execution in File>Open (options), and look for more information over the Net to find out which folders ought to be deleted.