The Antivirus Test File
Author:
EICAR
Download:
The Antivirus Test File
Product Type:
Antivirus tool
Target User:
Security administrator
IT Problem:
Use the EICAR Antivirus Test File to confirm that your antivirus program is running properly.
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About this Download:
If you are active in the antivirus research field, then you will regularly receive requests for virus samples. Some requests are easy to deal with: they come from fellow researchers whom you know well, and whom you trust. Other requests come from people you have never heard from before. A third set of requests come from exactly the people you might think would be least likely to want viruses -- "users of antivirus software."
They want some way of checking that they have deployed their software correctly, or of deliberately generating a "virus incident in order to test their corporate procedures, or of showing others in the organization what they would see if they were hit by a virus."
Since it is unacceptable for you to send out real viruses for test or demonstration purposes, you need a file that can safely be passed around and which is obviously non-viral, but which your antivirus software will react to as if it were a virus.
The EICAR Standard Antivirus Test File is safe to pass around, because it is not a virus, and does not include any fragments of viral code. Most products react to it as if it were a virus (though they typically report it with an obvious name, such as "EICAR-AV-Test").
The file is a legitimate DOS program, and produces sensible results when run. (It prints the message "EICAR-STANDARD-ANTIVIRUS-TEST-FILE!")
It consists entirely of printable ASCII characters, so that it can easily be created with a regular text editor. Any antivirus product that supports the test file should detect it in any file, providing that the file starts with the following 68 characters, and is exactly 68 bytes long:
X5O!P%@AP[4PZX54(P^)7CC)7}$EICAR-STANDARD-ANTIVIRUS-TEST-FILE!$H+H*
The EICAR Standard Antivirus Test File is useful to those people looking for real viruses "for test purposes," or discussing the possibility of an industry-standard test file.
System Requirements:
NT,
Windows 2000,
Windows Server 2003,
Windows XP
Download Size:
68 Bytes
Download: To obtain this download, go to:
http://www.eicar.org/anti_viru...
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