Anti-Virus Software

By Johnathan Trakalo and Mitchell Pleet

What is Anti-VirusAn Anti-virus program is a computer program that scans files to identify and eliminate computer viruses and other malicious software.

Anti-virus software has two main techniques to accomplish this:

Examining files to look for known viruses by means of a virus dictionaryIdentifying suspicious behavior from any computer program which might indicate infection

Most commercial anti-virus software uses both of these approaches.

Virus dictionary

How Anti-Virus Software Works

•When anti-virus software examines a file, it refers to a dictionary of known viruses. If a piece of code in the file matches any virus identified in the dictionary, then the anti-virus software can take three different steps depending on the user.•Delete the file•Quarantine it so that the file is inaccessible to other programs and its virus is unable to spread, •Attempt to repair the file by removing the virus itself from the file.

•The anti-virus software monitors the behavior of all programs. If one program tries to write data to an executable program, for example, this is flagged as suspicious behavior and the user is alerted to this, and asked what to do.

•The user is able to tell the anti-virus program to delete it , quarantine it and attempt to repair the file.

Suspicious Behavior

Other Methods•The Anti-Virus Program will try to emulate the beginning code of each new program that is being executed, then transferring control to the executable. If the program try’s to use self-modifying code (it immediately tries to find other executables) or otherwise appears as a virus the file if flagged. This method has a large percentage of error, as it falsely accuses programs of attaining viruses.

Sandbox Method

•Emulates the operating system of a program and runs the executable in its own simulation. After the program has finished, the sandbox is analyzed for changes which might indicate a virus. Due to the program being slowed down this type of detection is normally only performed during on-demand scans.

•To battle the Vienna virus, Bernt Fix created the “mks_vir” anti-virus program in 1988, witch is still around today…

•Since the “mks_vir” program was only available in Poland, Briton Alan Solomon created the “Dr. Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit” in 1988

History of Anti-Virus Software

•In the 1960s a group of programmers developed a game called Core Wars, which could reproduce every time it was run, and even saturate the memory of other players' computers. The creators of this virus also created the first anti-virus, called Reeper, which could destroy copies created by Core Wars.

•In 1992, Peter Tippett used the concept of how a human virus attacked a human and transferred it to a computer viruses with his company, Certus International Corp.

•After being sold to Symantec Corp, Peter Tippett joined the company and used his ideas to improve the software Nortan AntiVirus

•2 years later 19 anti-virus programs had been introduced, including Norton AntiVirus and and McAfee’s ViruScan.

•Before the internet was a common object, virus’s were spread using Floppy Disk

•It was said virus’s could not be spread threw the read-able content of emails, but executable attachments were as risky as programs on floppy disks

•Now with email programs able to execute program code within a message's text by simply reading the message, or even previewing its content.

How Viruses Spread

The Future Of Anti-Virus Software

Rather than email, the fastest-growing threat is so-called drive-by attacks - malware, it is automatically downloaded when you visit an infected website. Unlike email threats, you can't avoid this by using common sense and avoiding dodgy sites; Two anti-virus software programmers are seeing 29,000 new infected web pages a day, and 80% of these are not "dangerous areas". Instead, they're legitimate sites on anything from pottery to the Miami Dolphins and the Bank of India.

How To Prevent Malware from Infecting Your Computer

Once installed, malware can be very difficult to remove and can cause your computer to be a nuisance rather than a boon. In extreme cases, reinstallation of the operating system is the only viable way of removing an infection.One way of protecting you computer is by downloading a malware detector. They sometime are included with antivirus programs. They will usually block more types of malware.. Unfortunately, there also exists a good amount of malware which can install itself using an even higher level of access which circumvents this service-level protection.

Problems With Anti-Virus Software

One complication about anti-virus programs and programmers is that they are somewhat up against the wall, as people are always trying to find new ways to get past there systems and they never know what to expect, as for the virus programmer they know exactly what they have to beat in the anti virus system. Another major problem that people have with anit-virus software is that is can slow there computer down, especially if you are running more than one anti-virus program. Next is a chart that shows how much your computer can be slowed down by virus protection.

Problems With Anti-Virus Software

Anti-Virus Software Percent slower Boot CPUNorton Anti-Virus Security 46% 20%McAfee VirusScan Enterprise 8 7% 20%Norton Internet Security 2007 45% 8%Trend Micro PC-cillin AV 2006 2% 0%ZoneAlarm ISS 16% 0% Norton Antivirus 2002 11% 8%Windows Live OneCare 11% 8%Webroot Spy Sweeper 6% 8%Nod32 v2.5 7% 8%Windows Defender 5% 8%Panda Antivirus 2007 20% 4%AVG 7.1 Free 15% 0%

Top Anti-virus Programs1. Kaspersky Anti-Virus 6

Download price: $55 ($35 renewal)Malware detection rate: 96%System slowdown: 10%Ease of use: Superior

2. Symantec Norton Anti-Virus 2007

Download price : US$40 ($39 renewal)Malware detection rate: 96%System slowdown: 10%Ease of use: Superior

Top Anti-virus Programs Cont.

3. BitDefender Antivirus 10 Download price: $55 ($22 renewal)Malware detection rate: 96%System slowdown: 124%Ease of use: Superior

4. Eset NOD32

Download price: $39 ($27 renewal)Malware detection rate: 90%System slowdown: 5%Ease of use: Very Good

Top Anti-virus Programs Cont.

5. Panda Antivirus 2007

Download price: $23 ($30 renewal)Malware detection rate: 90%System slowdown: 4%Ease of use: Very Good

6. Alwil Avast 4 Antivirus Professional

Download price : US$40 ($28 renewal)Malware detection rate: 92%System slowdown: 4%Ease of use: Good

Top Anti-virus Programs Cont.

7. Grisoft AVG 7.5 Anti-Virus Professional Edition

Download price: US$38 ($15 renewal)Malware detection rate: 91%System slowdown: 2%Ease of use: Good

8. Trend Micro AntiVirus plus Anti-Spyware 2007

Download price: US$40 ($40 renewal)Malware detection rate: 82%System slowdown: 9%Ease of use: Very Good

The End