Friday, April 13, 2007

Scan a File With Multiple Antivirus Engines

What do you do when you come across a suspicious file that you think contains a virus but your antivirus software gives a negative result? Or when you got a seemingly safe file from a trusted source but your antivirus software says otherwise?

Enter VirusTotal - "a free service for scanning suspicious files using several antivirus engines". Just send them a file, either through the web interface or e-mail, and they'll scan the file using antivirus engines from various companies, which includes:-

Here's a screenshot of a test I carried out:


Click to expand.

Because of the server load, I had to wait a few minutes before my request is processed. The results show that different antivirus engines give varying opinions about whether my file (IEHelp.dll) is infected or not - but when antivirus companies like McAfee and Symantec say it's safe, then it probably is. Therefore, this service is also useful to gauge the effectiveness of different antivirus solutions.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi. Thank you for the info. A correction though. Symantec and McAfee are always your 3rd or 4th reliable source of information when it comes to viruses. They are both always on the lower half of the top 20 list of any independent antivirus test lab. Check out the websites of security-mark.com, av-comparatives.org and av-test.org

Jennifer Abej said...

Hey Thanks for the info. Very useful list of different antivirus

SOUTH DETROIT said...

Very well written. In my view every person ought to look at it. Thanks for sharing your ideas.

emma said...


This blog is really awesome!