You’ve received a file from a friend but you’re unsure if the file is safe to open or not. You launch your AntiVirus program to scan and found no problem with it. You’re still scared because that friend of yours is very untrustworthy and you know that you can’t 100% trust antivirus programs as they rely on definitions to detect known viruses. New viruses are growing exponentially every year and it is possible to not have a definition in time to properly diagnose a dangerous line of code. You thought of maybe installing 2 or more antivirus on your computer might give you better protection. You’re WRONG! It is advisable to ONLY install ONE antivirus program on a computer because more than that can cause conflicts.

So you can’t install more than 1 antivirus program and you can’t 100% trust your antivirus. Here’s the solution.

What if you can scan the file that your friend sent you using 30 different types of anti-virus, anti-spyware, anti-malware and anti-hacker engines listed below? Now you can with VirusTotal! Thanks to Hispasec Sistemas, Virustotal offers a free service for scanning suspicious files using several antivirus engines. No download, license or installation needed. Simply upload the file or files that you want to scan and you’ll be in queue for a while depending on the VirusTotal server load to start scanning and display the result.

● Aladdin (eSafe)
● ALWIL (Avast! Antivirus)
● Authentium (Command Antivirus)
● Avira (AntiVir)
● Bit9 (FileAdvisor)
● Cat Computer Services (Quick Heal)
● ClamAV (ClamAV)
● CA Inc. (Vet)
● Doctor Web, Ltd. (DrWeb)
● Eset Software (NOD32)
● ewido networks (ewido anti-malware)
● Fortinet (Fortinet)
● FRISK Software (F-Prot)
● F-Secure (F-Secure)
● Grisoft (AVG)
● Hacksoft (The Hacker)
● Ikarus Software (Ikarus)
● Kaspersky Lab (AVP)
● McAfee (VirusScan)
● Microsoft (Malware Protection)
● Norman (Norman Antivirus)
● Panda Software (Panda Platinum)
● Prevx (Prevx1)
● Softwin (BitDefender)
● Sophos (SAV)
● Sunbelt Software (Antivirus)
● Symantec (Norton Antivirus)
● UNA Corp (UNA)
● VirusBlokAda (VBA32)
● VirusBuster (VirusBuster)

You’d feel safe after scanning with all these 30 types of antivirus engines isn’t it? If one can’t do it, definitely 30 of them can! However, Virustotal does not substitute any antivirus software installed in a PC, as it only scans individual files on demand. It does not offer permanent protection for the user’s system either. Although the detection rate afforded by the use of multiple antivirus engines is far superior to that offered by just one product, these results DO NOT guarantee the harmlessness of a file. Currently, there is not any solution that offers a 100% effectiveness rate for detecting viruses and malware.

Other than uploading through VirusTotal website, you can also scan file by using email.
1. Create a new message with scan@virustotal.com as destination address of your email.
2. Write SCAN in the Subject field (write SCAN- if you do not want to distribute your sample to any AV company).
3. Attach the file to be scanned. Such file must not exceed 10 MB in size. If the attached file is larger, the system will reject it automatically.
4. You will receive an email with a report of the file analysis. Response time will vary depending on the load of the system at the time of placing your request.

I did a test by placing 3 viruses into a ZIP file and upload to VirusTotal for scanning. FileAdvisor wasn’t able to scan compressed file because it reports “no virus found“. As for the rest, it only reports 1 virus and not 3.

[ Scan Files with VirusTotal ]

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