33 I think I have detected a new virus; what do I do? (Computer virus)
Description
This article is from the Computer Viruses FAQ, by Nick FitzGerald n.fitzgerald@csc.canterbury.ac.nz with numerous contributions by others.
33 I think I have detected a new virus; what do I do? (Computer virus)
Whenever there is doubt over a virus, you should obtain the latest
versions of several (not just one) major virus scanners. Some scanning
programs now use "heuristic" methods (F-PROT and TBSCAN are examples),
and "activity monitoring" programs can report a program as being
possibly infected when it is in fact perfectly safe (odd, perhaps, but
not infected). If no scanner finds a virus, but a heuristic program
raises some alarms (or there are other reasons to suspect a virus--e.g.
change in size of files, change in memory allocation) then it is
possible that you have found a new virus, although the chances are
probably greater that it is an "odd but okay" disk or file. Start by
looking in recent Virus-L/comp.virus postings for "known" false
positives, then contact the author of the antivirus software that
reports the virus-like features; the documentation for the software may
have a section explaining what to do if you think you have found a new
virus.
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