Test Effectiveness of Your Antivirus using EICAR String

We have seen many posts on the anti virus and people always give their opinion about there choice of the best anti virus. Though I have not seen anyone talking about method to check the effectiveness of your anti virus.

The best way to check the effectiveness is by getting some file from some infected PC into your system but the question is are you willing to take that risk? of course I will never take that risk.

Here is the simple code ( TEST string) copy and paste it on a notepad file and save it. If your anti virus detect it as a virus or threat that will confirm you about the effectiveness of the anti virus.

X5O!P%@AP[4PZX54(P^)7CC)7}$EICAR-STANDARD-ANTIVIRUS-TEST-FILE!$H+H*

This is how my antivirus detected the notepad file as virus.

Antivirus test
Antivirus test

This is one of the best way to check the effectiveness of your anti virus as you don’t have to risk the security of your system. This is EICAR TEST string.

Do let us know how effective your anti virus is? In case if it fails I recommend get any of these anti virus from Top 10 Anti-virus of 2008.


[Editors Note: This is the first post by our new co-blogger  P@r@noid from Shoutmeloud.com where he writes about Technology, Blogging, Social media and various computer hack.

You can also write for DW and earn some bucksDeatils about revenue sharing program are here.]

6 Comments

rayanhacker January 16, 2009

Good post….

After pasting the code in a .txt file when I tried to save the file McAfee-2009 just gave a pop up and said

“quarantined an infected file on your computer. You can restore quarantined files from the Restore pane in SecurityCenter.

About this Virus
Detected: EICAR test file (Virus)
Quarantined From: C:\Users\Rayan\Desktop\test.txt”

When I closed the file it was not allowed to save it also.

Now thats good…! 😉

shalin January 17, 2009

Hi,

I used this check. I have e-scan. it changed the name of the file from a.txt to a.txt.mwt [:)]

Mullick420 January 25, 2009

i have avg free and it wouldn’t let me save it. I feel a little safer

Rahul Bansal January 26, 2009

@ Mullick420
AVG free is antivirus too after all! 😉

Vaibhav Kanwal March 15, 2009

I’ve been using Avira Antivir since the last 1 year, Its free and awesome. Consumes very less system resources and works like a charm. It even has an antiroot kit so it detects almost all the Virus, Trojans my Virus infected Pen drive throws on it.
My college lab is a breeding ground for most crazy trojans around and Antivir just zaps them away.

Its the best antivirus solution. AVAST to kuch bhi nahi hai 😉

aishwary mishra February 10, 2010

wow!! its really work…thx harsh sir,…now i m feeling mega bit safer..