Mark Hansen wrote:
Actually, virus scanning as a whole is hit or miss. Just because you
run one (or all) of them doesn't in any way mean you don't have a
virus, etc., on your machine.
The only tool in existence that will prevent your machine from getting
a virus is to never turn it on in the first place.
The scanner/cleaner tools can find most things, but they can't by
any stretch of the imagination find everything. This just isn't
possible.
To help you see this, imagine the company that created a virus scanner.
They designed their scanner to look for particular patterns in files
which match known virus patterns. Known at that time, that is. Now,
consider the situation even 5 minutes after they released their latest
virus scanning database to you. Someone on the planet can develop a
new virus which the scanner software doesn't know to look for.
How will running the scanner software catch this one? It simply can't.
In a few days/weeks, the software may be updated to catch that particular
virus (depending on how easy it is to detect and how quickly the scanner
software people are able to react to it).
Note also that if you're the only one hit by a particular virus, the
scanner software people may not even know about it - so their software
might never be updated to look for it.
I hope this help you understand things a bit better.
It depends a lot on how the programmer writes the definitions.
Suppose a security force is watching for criminals entering a company's
premises, and they define "criminal" as anyone carrying a gun. In that
case, they must do what they can to detect guns, such as x-ray scanners
at the gate. But some criminals don't carry guns -- some thieves, for
example, may try to sneak in and out without being detected, and rely on
stealth rather than force. So the security force needs to update its
definitions to recognize this type of criminal. Perhaps they also search
for anyone carrying a lock pick. And so forth. It becomes a pretty
complex task relying on a variety of indicators.
But it would be silly to look only for individuals who match a photo in
a particular album of known criminals, and modern virus scanners aren't
this silly. Instead, they use heuristics that recognize certain actions
or techniques -- like a security force noticing an individual who walks
down a hallway trying every door. A normal person would not do that, so
this action is a giveaway that the person is probably a thief. And
they'll detain him even though he may never have been caught before.
--
War doesn't determine who's right, just who's left.
--
Paul B. Gallagher
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