How Does Antivirus Software Identify Potential Viruses?
Infected viruses can cause major damage to your computers and networks. They can snoop on your personal information and corrupt your data and even cause you lose data. This can cause identity theft, frauds involving phishing, and financial fraud.
How do antivirus software detect possible viruses? Antivirus programs scan the files and code that they receive and comparing them to a database of already-known malware. These databases are updated continuously, allowing antivirus programs to spot new threats rapidly.
A virus is most often identified by an antivirus program looking at the digital fingerprint or signature. Every virus has a unique digital fingerprint that marks it apart from other programs and files. The signature is created when certain elements of the code of a virus are compared to a database of known malware and if a match is discovered, it is flagged. Antivirus scanners may also use the heuristic method to analyze the behavior of a file, or the characteristics that are suspicious. This analysis will look for patterns or tendencies of a particular file that may indicate it’s a virus, like deleting large quantities of information, analyzing keys with constrained restrictions or remotely connecting to equipment.
Some antivirus programs use sandboxing in addition to the signature-based or heuristic type of detection. Sandboxing lets a virus run in a virtual setting and observe how it behaves in order to verify if it’s doing what it’s supposed to do. If a virus is found by the scanner, it can be quarantined and deleted from the computer immediately.