Sophos

Online support

Product maintenance

Contact support

Support services

Sophos Anti-Virus for Mac OS X: Error message 'Access to the infected file is denied' when moving or copying an infected file

Issue
When on-access scanning is enabled in Sophos Anti-Virus for MAC OS X and a user attempts to copy or move an infected file, on-accesss scanning prevents the action and Sophos Anti-Virus generates the following desktop alert:

Access to the infected file is denied

and the Mac OS X Finder displays the message:

The operation cannot be completed because you do not have sufficient privileges for some of the items

A file with the same name as the one the user attempted to copy/move appears in the destination folder. Note that this 'phantom' file is non-viral and has a size of 0 bytes on a local drive, or 4 bytes in a network shared drive. This is only seen in Mac OS X 10.5.

Sophos product and version
Sophos Anti-Virus for MAC OS X

Operating system
MAC OS X 10.5

If you need more information or guidance, then please contact technical support.