Antivirus software principle operation

There are several kinds of antivirus software, based on the principle of its operation. Below is a short overview of each type and reviews of different antivirus software.

Basic notion regarding antivirus software

Antivirus software is software built with the goal of detecting and removing such malware as computer viruses, computer worm, trojan horses, spyware and adware.

Antivirus software can be classified by identification methods it uses for detecting malware.

Signature-based detection is the most common method used. Antivirus software maintains a dictionary of known virus signatures and compares the contents of a file to those it has in the dictionary. Because viruses can embed themselves in existing files, the entire file is searched for the signature. This method, however, cannot deal with new and unknown viruses.

Another heuristic approach is file emulation. File emulation involves executing a program in a virtual environment and logging what actions the program performs. Depending on the actions logged, the antivirus software can determine if the program is malicious and then carry out the appropriate security actions.

Cloud antivirus is a technology that uses lightweight agent software on the protected computer, while offloading the majority of data analysis to the provider’s infrastructure. One approach to implementing cloud antivirus involves scanning suspicious files using multiple antivirus engines.

Online scanning antivirus techniques

Online scanning is a feature offered by some antivirus vendors. Periodic online scanning is a good idea even for those who run antivirus applications on their computers because those applications are often slow to catch the new threats. One of the first things that malicious software does in an attack is disable any existing antivirus software and sometimes the only way to know if an attack took place is by using an online resource that isn’t installed on the infected computer.

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