How to check if your antivirus is working [ Antivirus ]
By Ashish MohtaMost of the time we just install the antivirus or the anti Malware programs and relax that they are working fine and one fine morning you see things not working and finally you realize that its your antivirus program which was not working at all. Here is a small test which you can do in case you are not sure if your antivirus program is working fine or not.
#1 Open Notepad and paste this string into it ( without double quotes )
“X5O!P%@AP[4\PZX54(P^)7CC)7}$EICAR-STANDARD-ANTIVIRUS-TEST-FILE!$H+H* ”
#2 Save it and as soon as you do your antivirus real time protection should be able to detect it. In case you have disabled the real time protection run a scan for this file.
This file actually is a dummy virus which simulates like a virus which is provided by EICAR for distribution as the “EICAR Standard Anti-Virus Test File”, The file is a legitimate DOS program, and produces sensible results when run (it prints the message “EICAR-STANDARD-ANTIVIRUS-TEST-FILE!”). You can read more on this at EICAR Antivirus Test File

For those of you who say your auto scan doesn’t detect it… I have tried on a few anti-virus… If your anti-virus doesn’t scan text files under real time then it will not detect it until you do a system scan.
To make it detect it real-time you need to tell your real-time scan to scan all files, not just “smart” file scan.
You can test it by saving as an exe or other format that is on the auto detect file list.
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About The Author of this article: Ashish is one of the co-author of this blog and writes on various interesting softwares, PC tips and more. You can read more of his articles here. |
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hope it shows the positive results.
Hi Snufkin,
Thanks for avira update. Was your real time protection on or you do it manually ?
Hi Charles,
Thanks cool looks like I never knew this anti virus. I will check it.
Stumbled nonetheless, I’ve always downloaded it before, never knew it was so short & you could just create it as a text file, handy.
So easily memorable too, just rolls of the tongue. All together now X5O!P%@AP[4\PZX5… er…
What version of NOD32 are you using? I’m using 3.0.621.0 and didn’t have such an issue. The second I clicked on it, the alert popped up for me.
My copy of Avast didn’t care when it ended in .txt, but the second I renamed it to .com, it detected it. Naming it whatever.com.txt also does not cause the on-access scanner in Avast to freak out, but trying to download the eicar test file from the Eicar website as a text document does trigger Avast. Obviously Avast is programmed to be less trusting of stuff from the internet.
I found that it only works right right away if you save it as anything except .txt
.mov, .mp3, .doc, .xxx, .txr, etc…anything but .txt
Don’t deliberately put a virus on your computer. That’s stupid.
How do you know it’s a test? If you don’t understand what ““X5O!P%@AP[4\PZX54(P^)7CC)7}” is then you don’t know. So don’t do it.
Anti-virus companies know about these tests, and in time they patch their program to pass the tests, rather than actually protecting the method or design the test uses. Meaning it may protect against test viruses and not real ones. You have no way of knowing, so the test is worthless.
It gets worse. With the laziest antivirus makers, they may present you the dialog window claiming that it stopped it, when in reality it did not stop it at all (windows oneCare does this all the time, the dirty liars).
I still hate it though, before I got my Quad-Core it used 25% of the processor at all times (on an 2GHz single core AMD.)
Gonna install some other opensource/ freeware one after I reinstall Windows.
Checked this on 3 Windows machines.
Cool, I know now this has been around a while, but hadn’t seen before. Thanks!
Not surprising.
That’s why I do not trust antivirus programs as you can check on my blog.
ESET NOD32 Smart Security v3.0.551.0 detected it the same second i save it as a “virus.txt” file
Detected “EICAR File Test”
U must remove them from the blacklist.
Also the pagefile and other file types are listed there.
When u save the TXT file and scan it via right mouse click avast will find it 100%
least it works, and its not hogging all my resources for stuff although i don’t download
AVG is amazing, purely because i works and it’snot in your face the whole time
Thumbs up.
Caught and quarantined it the instant i saved it as an .exe though
coz NOD32 RULES!!!
Using WinXP
Avast 4.7 home edition & AVG Free didn’t detect it until i scanned it.
But anyway i like this, Stumbled (Thumbs Up)
To make it detect it real-time you need to tell your real-time scan to scan all files, not just “smart” file scan.
You can test it by saving as an exe or other format that is on the auto detect file list.
Pretty neat test, I would suggest you mention this on the website.
Some anti-virus scans don’t scan real time on all flies and a txt file is usually ignored until a full-system scan.
Hi Justin
Thanks for pointing out that. I have updated and hope you stumbled it too.
Ashish
I use the ESET smart security, man its too good
Just after clicking it, i blasted that file off my computer..
Superb
Now I know my antivirus is working!
i tried it and my mcafee immediately detected it and never allowed me to save the file