Avast Testing

[harvey]

I just installed Avast and wonder if there is any safe way to tell if it is
working?

 

[BoB]

I just installed Avast and wonder if there is any safe way to tell if it is
working?

Not very well. You could search Google for
EICAR-STANDARD-ANTIVIRUS-TEST-FILE
and then attach it to an email to yourself. If Avast is
setup properly, it should send EICAR to the virus vault.
If you can't get into the virus vault then Avast isn't
setup properly or RPCSS is not enabled.

All AVs will react to this 70 byte file unless they are
totally dead. I keep a dozen or so virus/worms/trojans on
a floppy for when I want to test a new AV or version change.

BoB
For the duration of Swen, my address is inoperative.

 

[Roger Parks]

Not very well. You could search Google for
EICAR-STANDARD-ANTIVIRUS-TEST-FILE
and then attach it to an email to yourself. If Avast is
setup properly, it should send EICAR to the virus vault.
If you can't get into the virus vault then Avast isn't
setup properly or RPCSS is not enabled.

All AVs will react to this 70 byte file unless they are
totally dead. I keep a dozen or so virus/worms/trojans on
a floppy for when I want to test a new AV or version change.

This is exactly right!!

For example, AVG free ver 6 works fine on the eicar file, but reacts totally
differently when working with an actual virus signature (it asks you what
you want done with the eicar; it simply sequesters the real virus - which
would be a disaster of it got a false positive on a critical system file).
Fortunately, AVG 6 doesn't find much (Avast does somewhat better on my
collection of 80 bugs; AntiVir does better than either).

If you are serious about testing an AV, then you need to keep some viruses
(I keep them in an encrypted file so that Kaspersky doesn't go nuts during
routine scans.