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Home , Antivirus software, Computer virus

A PROJECT REPORT ON ANTIVIRUS

1.INRODUCTION

“Antivirus (or -) is used to prevent, detect, and remove , including , worms, and trojan horses. Such programs may also prevent and remove , , and other forms of malware.”

Antivirus software is used to prevent, detect, and remove malware and other computer viruses. Anti virus software systems detections involve searching for known malicious patterns in code. it is possible for a user to be infected with new viruses that have no sign or symptoms or existence.

To counter this problem of zero day threats, anti virus systems can be used to detect these viruses when you don't even know that they are there.

TYPES OF COMPUTER ANTIVIRUS

There are many different types of anti virus software that have been developed over the years. Original products were just scanners that would search through the hard disk looking for viruses. As viruses have become more common and difficult, the more anti virus software is being made to keep up with current virus issues. There are many different types of general virus scanners that are used on PCs today:

Conventional Disk Scanner

This is the stand virus check program. It can be ran upon the users request, and it scans the contents of the disks, directories or files that the users wants, for any boot sectors or files that contain viruses that it recognizes. These are usually ran manually by the user as a preventive maintenance activity or when they thing a virus is suspected. The user can schedule automatic scanning through the use of a program scheduler.

Memory Resident Scanners

An anti virus software that now come with a special program that sits in the background while your using your computer and it automatically scans for viruses based on different triggers. These programs can automatically scan as they run or scan floppy disks when you command a shutdown of your system. This scanner offers increased protection and more chances of catching a virus before it does damage to your computer.

Behavior Based Detection

Some products offer an option where they will sit in memory and look for virus like behavior and suspicious activity. Behavior based detection is looking for the types of actions taken on files or boot sectors that might be performed by viruses trying to spread. This type of will look for a trap, and will generically catch viruses red handed.

Start up Scanners

This type of antivirus scanner is designed to be run every time the PC is booted up. It preforms a quick scan of the disks boot sectors and critical system files. the idea is to catch these viruses before the PC boots up reducing the chance of it to spread.

Inoculation

Instead of scanning for viruses this type of antivirus software looks for changes that the viruses make to files and boot sectors. With a clean system the software will get a snap shot of information in each about its content and size. Periodically it will re examine these files to see if anything has changed.

Top Anti Virus Software

 The Shield Deluxe 2009 Antivirus & Antispyware  Antivirus with Antispyware 6.0  Antivirus 2009  CA Anti-Virus Plus 2009  McAfee VirusScan Plus 2009  Antivirus 2009  ESET NOD 32 3.0

ADVANTAGES OF ANTIVIRUS

Having a good anti-virus program can be the difference between the life and death of yourcomputer. With so many computer viruses in existence, protecting your computer's should be one of your top priorities. Aside from just stopping viruses, most anti-virus programs have other features, such as firewalls, that will ensure the well-rounded safety and security of your valued computer.

1.Protection from Viruses The greatest and most obvious advantage to installing anti-virus software on your computer is that it will prevent you from getting viruses such as trojans, malware and spyware. Viruses range in severity from the harmless to the downright system crippling. Not only can a virus destroy all of the valued on your computer, it can make the computer utterly worthless by infecting and destroying processes vital to your computer's performance.

2.Protecting Personal Information and viruses go hand in hand. A good anti-virus program will protect you while you surf the , preventing hackers from gaining access to personal things such as information and bank account access. The feature included with most anti-virus software will block any unauthorized incoming connections to your network or computer, preventing hackers from digging their hooks into your life and your computer.

3.Cost Savings Though some anti-virus programs are quite pricey, there are some very good options for those wanting something relatively cheap or even free. Many free anti-virus programs are available that will protect your system just as well as a subscription-based anti-virus program. Even if you choose to go with a program you have to pay for, the cost of the program and subscription to their service will almost certainly extend the life of your computer, meaning you'll have to purchase new less frequently than those who choose not to use anti-virus software.

4.Convenience Though you may find it inconvenient to have to run virus scans and worry about the security of your computer, you'd have more to worry about without proper anti-virus protection. A computer left open for viruses and hackers will often start to show premature signs of wear and a significant slow down will be noticeable, making normal computing tasks take much longer and causing much more hassle. Let's assume your system does get infected with a virus. Without protection you'd be at the mercy of the virus and you'd have to waste time trying to find it, delete it and restore any damage it has caused and it will still probably be there, even after deletion. Yet with proper real-time anti-virus software working you will simply get a notification that a virus has been detected and be asked if you would like to delete it. These notifications usually come as soon as the virus is detected, leaving it without enough time to do its damage.

WHAT IS

People have a very general view that there are many types of computer viruses and are those programs that cause damage or make the system . Malicious code is the general word used and virus is one type of malicious code. Worms and Trojans are different from computer virus and destructive types of worms are sometimes termed as internet types of virus. Computer viruses have made their mark on the PC's since the 90's with different types of viruses causing damage to computers.

The earliest viruses made the most impact as no anti-virus programs were available. The advent of anti-virus programs spelled a death blow to many common types of computer viruses that were written by the various tools to generate types of computer virus. Those who were inept at programming used these various tool to generate the virus. Devious mind always find new ways when they found that the anti-virus software's were able to disinfect and remove the different types of computer viruses they went on to new methods and that is how Trojans and worms came up.

There are a few main types of computer viruses and these computer virus types are classified below depending upon the infection methods:

Boot sector/Master Boot Record Computer Virus

Means of Infection Boot sector is that area of the computer that is accessed when the computer is turned on. A boot sector virus infects this portion. Once the boot sector is infected the virus is loaded into memory when the computer is turned on. This virus then infects boot sectors on floppies or other Master Boot record virus only infects the Master boot record and not the boot sector

Damage Caused Boot sector viruses gain complete control of the master boot record or the DOS boot sector by replacing the contents with that of its own. This allows the virus to spread fast and cause damage:

 By gaining control of the master boot record and the DOS boot sector the boot sector viruses can sometimes hide the resources that the computer has( the floppy drive even though attached may not be present)

 Some boot sector viruses contain instructions to redirect disk reads.  Some boot sector viruses move the master boot record to another location causing the system to crash when it boots up. Other boot sector viruses cause damage to the master boot record

 Some boot sector viruses damage the File Allocation Table (FAT) which is the index of all the files on the drive. This causes loss of data

Removal The best way to remove boot sector virus is to boot the computer with using a clean boot disk and then rewrite the files with the good operating system files on the infected disk. These viruses were very much prevalent in the ninety's and a host of antivirus programs are now available to detect and clean them effectively

HOW ANTIVIRUS PROTECT COMPUTER FROM VIRUS

How many times have you been pestered with viruses, , bad cookies and all sort of malware? How many times have you lost your important documents and pictures, because you clicked on a little file you got in your e-mail client? How many times have your computer stopped working normally after you visited a web-site? If your reply is “a lot of times” or “sometimes” then this guide is for you. There are lots of ways when surfing on the web or when working on your computer to get a virus but, let me tell you frankly, if you get something harmful, most of the times it depends on you, but at the same time it is not your fault. It only means that you have not been educated or trained adequately on how to behave safely while working with your hyper-technological PC. Keep in mind that it is because of this lack of knowledge I am talking about that viruses still continue to spread all over the world costing damages worth millions of dollars. If your company has always taught you how to use operative systems and programs such as: Vista or XP, , Open Office and other programs to edit documents, pictures etc, but it has never taught you about antivirus, antispyware etc. it means that your boss, who should be your educator, has behaved in a wrong way, has been a bad teacher hurting you and his own interests. How much money and time your company or your school could have saved if it just taught you that you were not supposed to click on the little file named “hello.exe” attached to an and that made your PC turn off , deleting all files with .doc extension automatically? I don’t want to criticize anybody, but companies and schools think more about productivity than education and security, giving you just infos you are supposed to know to work. Nothing more, nothing less to fill up that knowledge gap that could prevent you from clicking on that famous “hello.exe” file. So let’s start this little guide with the assumption that all you know about Internet safety is zero, but with some tips you can put yourself in a condition of supremacy and avoid 99% of Internet threats without losing the joy to surf the web or working in the way you like.

Rule First: Be safe. Don’t click! Reading from Wikipedia: “A computer virus is a that can copy itself and infect a computer without permission or knowledge of the user.”, “…Some viruses are programmed to damage the computer by damaging programs, deleting files, or reformatting the hard disk.”. Did you read what Wikipedia write? A virus is a program, so when you have to deal with one of them don’t put yourself in a position of inferiority. Don’t think: “Hey, it’s a virus. It is smarter than me”. It is exactly the other way-around. Since a virus or another kind of malware is a piece of software, you have to think about it as something really dumb, doing something it has been programmed to do such as: deleting, formatting, changing etc. And since it is a program you have also to think of the only way to let it work is to activate it in some way. So here we have a rule we have to keep in mind: Don’t click on anything you don’t know. This is the most powerful advice this guide can give you. More powerful than the most sophisticated antivirus and more cleaver than any computer engineer.

Rule Second: Recognize threats on your e-mails at glance Viruses and spywares spread on the Internet after growing in the PCs. When they are ready and have made enough damages in a machine, they try to leave it to infect another one. To do that they usually steal all e-mail addresses found on the host computer. E-mail addresses are found on the lists contained in the e-mail clients such as: Windows Mail, Windows Outlook, Eudora etc. At this point they send themselves by email as attachments. Virus creators try to make their viruses appealing or just conceal it into something else. Sometimes instead they leave them as they are. Anyway if you get an e-mail with an attachment having these features refer to the first rule:

 Be careful of files having these extensions: .EXE, .BAT, .COM. For sure they are virus. These extensions can be mingled with other ones to trick you into thinking they are safe files. Here are a couple of examples: sunshine.mp3.bat, picture12.jpeg.exe, funnymovie.divx.com  Other times viruses conceal themselves to deceive you, so even files having these extensions can be viruses: .MP3, .MPEG, .JPEG, .JPG, .PDF, .DOC, .DVI, .HTML . So how to recognize a picture sent by a friend of yours from a masked virus? There are no rule for this, but generally speaking be suspicious about those e-mails coming from your friends and whose subjects are silly or with no sense. Viruses are rather stupid and when they send themselves don’t pay a lot of attention to what they write. They don’t have a lot of fantasy. So when you get an e-mail with a subject that looks like one of these examples refer to the first rule:Funny pictures, You won a price, Hey it is me, Open right now, RE: (and here there could be something that makes no sense to you), Your account at …… has been suspended, , Sexy pics, Sex (and sex related topics), Read and pass on… etc. The list here could be very big. As a general rule when you get an e-mail which sound weird, probably it is, so don’t click it nor open any attachment. If a suspicious e-mail was sent from a friend of yours, send him another e-mail asking information or just call him. Is your computer safety worth a phone call? I think so.  Be careful of e-mails from unknown people. As a general rule don’t open them if their object makes no sense to you.  Be careful of e-mails apparently coming from trusted company, banks, websites etc. If the e-mail address is something like: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] don’t open it and trash it right away. If you are unsure about an e-mail address go to McAfee site advisor and see if the site it comes from is secure.  Be careful of e-mails containing html codes or with embedded web pages. These particular e- mails don’t have attachments but once you open them, since they contain an embedded code, they could start downloading a virus. As a general rule disable html-support from your e-mail client or webmail.

Rule Third: Read your e-mails in a secure way Generally speaking software that connects your computer to the Internet is a possible vehicle for viruses and all kind of threats. Despite the fact that today e-mail clients have improved dramatically, I don’t like the idea of something managing my incoming e-mails. No matter how many filters it applies to select a good e-mail from a bad one. Sooner or later somebody will find a bug or a workaround to skip a filter. The next thing you know is that a virus will be downloaded into your PC with no way to control it. I always avoid e-mail clients. I always use webmail. I mean, if I want to check my e-mails I go to my Gmail or Yahoo account and I read them directly from the web. Yahoo mail is provided with an excellent spam and virus filter so before you download an attachment into your computer it checks the file automatically. Anyway even other webmails have automated virus filters even though you don’t see them. If you really want to use a software, I advice you to use those programs giving a preview of your e- mails without downloading anything. How is it possible? Simple, they just peer into the web- server and download those information that are important for you to understand what the e-mail is about. Other things such a: attachments, the whole mail body etc. are left in the server, ready to be fetched upon request. Here is the link toMagic Mail Monitor that is a really good e-mail preview software, plus it comes for free.

Rule Fourth: Surf wisely we have seen how viruses spread, what they look like and how to be safe when we read our daily e-mails. Sadly for us there other ways we can get a virus. The good news is that they all have to do with the way we surf Internet. Surfing the web is not easy at all. Like the ocean there are a lot of places that are really dangerous even though they seem to be perfectly safe. The fact that we do it daily with no second thought is another proof about how little we know and how badly we have been educated about PC safety. A serious problem is also represented by what we use to surf. All browsers are not alike and instead of looking for shiny, eye-candy features we should look for security. A browser is a program, do you remember what I said above? This particular software connects our PC to the Internet. For this reason it is dangerous and could cause us some malevolent malware. Since this software is essential to surf we have to be smart when pick it up. My choice is Firefox without any doubts. Secure, stable, simple to use, few bugs, free, it warns you when a new update is available and supported by a strong helping community. These are just a few reasons why I like it. If you want you can download it here.

Of course having a good board doesn’t mean anything if you go surfing to a part of the ocean full of sharks. Here is where you shouldn’t go and what you shouldn’t do:

 Don’t surf porn. Come on. You are grown enough, right? Avoid porn web-sites since some of them, once opened in your browser, can send you spyware, viruses and other malware, without speaking about the chance they have to steal your personal information. Stay way from them. By the way, most of the times when they download malware on your PC you are not aware of it. They don’t ask you to click anything. In this case you already infringed the rule Don’t click on anything you don’t know when you went to the site itself. As a matter of fact these sites use bugs on your browser to insert malicious files silently. Without knowing you are already cooked.  If you open a web site and a window appears right away telling you to download a software, don’t do it! Before clicking “OK” read what the window says and look at the program it wants you to download. If the program is called: Java, Flash, Shockwave you can download it (maybe with the exception of Java, read below) otherwise if you don’t feel secure about the request, just close the browser and start surfing again. Sometimes you can not do it because the web-site wants to force you to do something. If so, it is trying to make you downlaod something armful. To force the closing of the browser press: Control-Alt-Canc, click on , look for your browser name on the window that has just appeared, click on it and click End-Process at the bottom of the window.