ANTIVIRUS SOFTWARE

Antivirus (or anti-virus) software is used to prevent, detect, and remove malware, including computer viruses, worms, andtrojan horses. Such programs may also prevent and remove adware, spyware, and other forms of malware.

A variety of strategies are typically employed. Signature-based detection involves searching for known malicious patterns inexecutable code. However, it is possible for a user to be infected with new malware in which no signature exists yet. To counter such so called zero-day threats, heuristics can be used. One type of heuristic approach, generic signatures, can identify new viruses or variants of existing viruses for looking for known malicious code (or slight variations of such code) in files. Some antivirus software can also predict what a file will do if opened/run by emulating it in a sandbox and analyzing what it does to see if it performs any malicious actions. If it does, this could mean the file is malicious.

However, no matter how useful antivirus software is, it can sometimes have drawbacks. Antivirus software can degrade computer performance if it is not designed efficiently. Inexperienced users may have trouble understanding the prompts and decisions that antivirus software presents them with. An incorrect decision may lead to a security breach. If the antivirus software employs heuristic detection (of any kind), the success of it is going to depend on whether it achieves the right balance between false positives and false negatives. False positives can be as destructive as false negatives. In one case, a faulty virus signature issued by Symantec mistakenly removed essential operating system files, leaving thousands of PCs unable to boot. Finally, antivirus software generally runs at the highly trusted kernel level of the operating system, creating a potential avenue of attack.

In addition to the drawbacks mentioned above, the effectiveness of antivirus software has also been researched and debated. One study found that the detection success of major antivirus software dropped over a one-year period.

HISTORY

There are competing claims for the innovator of the first antivirus product. Possibly the first publicly documented removal of a computer virus in the wild was performed by Bernt Fix in 1987

An antivirus program to counter the Polish MKS vir was released in 1987. Dr. Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit, AIDSTEST andAntiVir were released by in 1988. Dr. Ahn Chul Soo (Charles Ahn, founder of AhnLab Inc) in South Korea also released the Anti-Virus software called 'V1' in June 10, 1988. By late 1990, nineteen separate antivirus products were available including Norton AntiVirus and McAfee VirusScan. Early contributors to work on computer viruses and countermeasures included Fred Cohen, Peter Tippett, and John McAfee.

Before Internet connectivity was widespread, viruses were typically spread by infected floppy disks. Antivirus software came into use, but was updated relatively infrequently. During this time, virus checkers essentially had to check executable files and the boot sectors of floppy and hard disks. However, as internet usage became common, initially through the use of modems, viruses spread throughout the Internet.

Powerful macros used in word processor applications, such as Microsoft Word, presented a further risk. Virus writers started using the macros to write viruses embedded within documents. This meant that computers could now also be at risk from infection by documents with hidden attached macros as programs.

Later email programs, in particular Microsoft Outlook Express and Outlook, were vulnerable to viruses embedded in the email body itself. Now, a user's computer could be infected by just opening or previewing a message. This meant that virus checkers had to check many more types of files. As always-on broadband connections became the norm and more and more viruses were released, it became essential to update virus checkers more and more frequently. Even then, a new zero-day virus could become widespread before antivirus companies released an update to protect against it.

INDENTIFICATION METHODS

There are several methods which antivirus software can use to identify malware.

Signature based detection is the most common method. To identify viruses and other malware, antivirus software compares the contents of a file to a dictionary of virus signatures. Because viruses can embed themselves in existing files, the entire file is searched, not just as a whole, but also in pieces.

Malicious activity detection is another approach used to identify malware. In this approach, antivirus software monitors the system for suspicious program behavior. If suspicious behavior is detected, the suspect program may be further investigated, using signature based detection or another method listed in this section. This type of detection can be used to identify unknown viruses or variants on existing viruses.

Heuristic-based detection, like malicious activity detection, can be used to identify unknown viruses. This can be accomplished in one of two ways: file analysis and file emulation.

File analysis is the process of searching a suspect file for virus-like instructions. For example, if a program has instructions toreformat the C drive, the antivirus software might further investigate the file. One downside of this feature is the large amount of computer resources needed to analyse every file, resulting in slow operation.^{[citation needed]}

File emulation is another heuristic approach. 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 or not and then carry out the appropriate disinfection actions.

VIRUS REMOVAL TOOLS

A virus removal tool is software for removing specific viruses from infected computers. Unlike complete antivirus scanners, they are usually not intended to detect and remove an extensive list of viruses; rather they are designed to remove specific viruses, usually more effectively than normal antivirus software. Sometimes they are also designed to run in places that regular antivirus software can't. This is useful in the case of a severely infected computer. Examples of these tools includeMcAfee Stinger and the Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool (which is run automatically by Windows update).