Anti Virus Test Program

This post was written by admin on June 17, 2008
Posted Under: Antivirus, PC Security, Technology

How often do you test your anti virus program to check that it is functioning correctly?

There is a very simple way to check any anti virus program, simply go to eicar.org and download the test file.

IMPORTANT: This in NOT a real virus and can do no damage

The following files were created by the European Institute for Computer Antivirus Research -- EICAR -- so that users could physically test the effectiveness of their chosen anti virus product.

Read the page carefully. There are four options to download using the standard http protocol and four for using the secure, SSL enabled https protocol.

The files for each are available as eicar.com, eicar.com.txt, eicar_com.zip and eicarcom2.zip

The first file contains an ASCII string, the second file is a copy using a different filename, the third is contained within a zip archive folder and the fourth contains the third zip file within a zip archive folder. This is to see if your anti virus will scan deeper than just the first level.

Any good anti virus program will stop you from downloading any of these and will inform you that ‘A Virus Was Found‘ and abort the connection. Others will allow you to download any of the files and save them to a folder from where you open them. Upon opening, your anti virus should warn you that a virus has been found and you should choose the option to put it into quarantine.

You can also write the ASCII characters in Notepad and save the file as ‘eicar.com’ and again your anti virus should warn you that a virus has been found and you should quarantine it.

When you have run any of the tests delete any eicar files that you have saved and also delete them from quarantine.

The following video will show you what happens. I downloaded the file on a computer running AVG, with no warning that it contained an ‘infected’ file, whereas trying to download it on another machine using Avast I received an immediate warning and could not download any of the files unless I used the https protocol.