How Does Antivirus Software Identify Potential Viruses?

As cyber-terrorists, thieves, and hackers continue to create newer, deadlier malware and viruses that can infiltrate systems, take data, corrupt files, and cause other harm It’s crucial to understand how your antivirus software recognizes possible threats. As you’re likely aware the primary objective of the majority of antivirus programs is to detect and eliminate malicious threats before they cause harm. They do this by analyzing your personal data, system files and computer software.

Traditionally, antivirus programs employ signature-based detection to evaluate documents that are downloaded to your devices against an existing database of signatures from known viruses. This method looks for the signatures of a specific virus, finds the matching file or program, and warns you if there is a match. This is effective, but hackers continue to create new and different types of malware. To be able to detect them antivirus programs must keep their definition files current with the most current virus samples.

Another method used by hackers to bypass antivirus scanners is to encode the malware’s payload. Once a virus has been encoded, it is able bypass signatures and scans because it’s not executable. This is usually accomplished by tagging a tiny header program on the front of the encoded virus, which allows it jump the program counter and execute at the first chance.

Antivirus software uses a variety of ways to detect viruses. These include heuristics-based identification and behavior-based detection. Heuristic-based detection is comparable to signature-based detection, in that it analyses the behavior of a program, looking for tendencies and patterns. By using a trial-and error approach the heuristic detection method can detect viruses that are not found by signature-based methods.

http://webroot-reviews.com/is-microsoft-defender-good-for-your-pc/