On 27 Mar 2000, at 18:50, don penlington <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Some people, including myself, run an antivirus program without ever having
> encountered a virus.
>
> I run McAfee a-v, and am never quite sure whether it is properly activated,
> or how effective it is, or what to expect if ever I did download a
> virus-infected file.  I don't have it fully activated, as I don't think
> it's necessary for home use and don't like its invasiveness.  Therefore I
> (hopefully) have it activated only for internet.
>
> It would be nice if A-V programs had a "Test" button.
>
> Is there a dummy but harmless virus file anywhere that I could download to
> test the system?

Yes, there is a test file called EICAR, which is a universal standard. You can construct this
file in any text editor, and any antivirus program should detect it, and should announce that
it found the "eicar-test-file" virus. It is of-course not a virus.

You may find instructions how to construct this test file on:
http://www.sophos.com/virusinfo/articles/eicar.html
or on:
http://www.datafellows.com/v-descs/eicar.htm

I shall give here, the instructions how to build it.
It should construct a text file (using a text editor such as notepad), and put the following
line in it:
X5O!P%@AP[4\PZX54(P^)7CC)7}$EICAR-STANDARD-ANTIVIRUS-TEST-FILE!$H+H*
The line has eaqclty 68 characters. Notice that it might be that in this message the line has
folded into two lines, but it is a single line.
Put nothing but this line.
The file should contain only this single line (saved in ASCII format, which is the standard
format in Windows and DOS txt editors).
Then change the name of the file so that it has the extension ".com", it can be any name
with this extension, e.g. eicar.com or testfile.com .
Any antivirus should detect this file as infected with the eicar-test-file virus.

Uzi

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