Archive for the ‘anti-virus’ tag
Anti-virus software
Antivirus software are computer programs that detect and remove virus programs. The term “antivirus” is used because the earliest examples were designed exclusively to combat computer viruses; however most modern antivirus software are now designed to tackle a wide range of threats, including worms, phishing attacks, rootkits, trojan horses and other malware like adware and spyware. Antivirus software typically uses two different approaches to accomplish this:
# examining (scanning) files to look for known viruses matching definitions in a virus dictionary, and
# identifying suspicious behavior from any computer program which might indicate infection.
The second approach is called heuristic analysis. Such analysis may include data captures, port monitoring and other techniques.
Most antivirus applications use both of these approaches, with an emphasis on the virus dictionary approach. Although some people consider network firewalls to be a type of antivirus software, this categorization is not correct.
