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DOWNLOAD ANTI MALWARE TESTFILE

You are here: Home1 / Download Anti Malware Testfile


ANTI MALWARE TESTFILE




WHAT IS THE EICAR TEST FILE?



The EICAR Anti-Virus Test File or EICAR test file is a computer file that was
developed by the European Institute for Computer Antivirus Research (EICAR) and
Computer Antivirus Research Organization (CARO), to test the response of
computer antivirus programs. Instead of using real malware, which could cause
real damage, this test file allows people to test anti-virus software without
having to use a real computer virus.


INTENDED USE



Additional notes:

 1. This file used to be named ducklin.htm or ducklin-html.htm or similar based
    on its original author Paul Ducklin and was made in cooperation with CARO.
 2. The definition of the file has been refined 1 May 2003 by Eddy Willems in
    cooperation with all vendors.
 3. The content of this documentation (title-only) was adapted 1 September 2006
    to add verification of the activity of anti-malware or anti-spyware
    products. It was decided not to change the file itself for
    backward-compatibility reasons.


WHO NEEDS THE ANTI-MALWARE TESTFILE

(read the complete text, it contains important information)
Version of 7 September 2006 

If you are active in the anti-virus research field, then you will regularly
receive requests for virus samples. Some requests are easy to deal with: they
come from fellow-researchers whom you know well, and whom you trust. Using
strong encryption, you can send them what they have asked for by almost any
medium (including across the Internet) without any real risk.

Other requests come from people you have never heard from before. There are
relatively few laws (though some countries do have them) preventing the secure
exchange of viruses between consenting individuals, though it is clearly
irresponsible for you simply to make viruses available to anyone who asks. Your
best response to a request from an unknown person is simply to decline politely.

A third set of requests come from exactly the people you might think would be
least likely to want viruses “users of anti-virus software”. They want some way
of checking that they have deployed their software correctly, or of deliberately
generating a “virus incident in order to test their corporate procedures, or of
showing others in the organisation what they would see if they were hit by a
virus”.


IMPORTANT NOTE



EICAR cannot be held responsible when these files or your AV scanner in
combination with these files cause any damage to your computer. YOU DOWNLOAD
THESE FILES AT YOUR OWN RISK. Download these files only if you are sufficiently
secure in the usage of your AV scanner. EICAR cannot and will not provide any
help to remove these files from your computer. Please contact the
manufacturer/vendor of your AV scanner to seek such help.




REASONS FOR TESTING ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE

Obviously, there is considerable intellectual justification for testing
anti-virus software against real viruses. If you are an anti-virus vendor, then
you do this (or should do it!) before every release of your product, in order to
ensure that it really works. However, you do not (or should not!) perform your
tests in a “real” environment. You use (or should use!) a secure, controlled and
independent laboratory environment within which your virus collection is
maintained.

Using real viruses for testing in the real world is rather like setting fire to
the dustbin in your office to see whether the smoke detector is working. Such a
test will give meaningful results, but with unappealing, unacceptable risks.

Since it is unacceptable for you to send out real viruses for test or
demonstration purposes, you need a file that can safely be passed around and
which is obviously non-viral, but which your anti-virus software will react to
as if it were a virus.

If your test file is a program, then it should also produce sensible results if
it is executed. Also, because you probably want to avoid shipping a pseudo-viral
file along with your anti-virus product, your test file should be short and
simple, so that your customers can easily create copies of it for themselves.

The good news is that such a test file already exists. A number of anti-virus
researchers have already worked together to produce a file that their (and many
other) products “detect” as if it were a virus.

Agreeing on one file for such purposes simplifies matters for users: in the
past, most vendors had their own pseudo-viral test files which their product
would react to, but which other products would ignore.




DOWNLOAD AREA

using the secure, SSL enabled protocol HTTPS




EICAR.COM

1 file(s) 0.00 KB
download



Com-file
68 Bytes


EICAR.TXT

1 file(s) 68KB
Download



1 Text-file
68 Bytes




EICAR.COM-ZIP

1 file(s) 184 KB
Download



1 Zip-file
184 Bytes


EICAR.COM2-ZIP

1 file(s) 308
Download



1 Zip-file
308 Bytes


THE ANTI-MALWARE TESTFILE



It is also short and simple – in fact, it consists entirely of printable ASCII
characters, so that it can easily be created with a regular text editor. Any
anti-virus product that supports the EICAR test file should detect it in any
file providing that the file starts with the following 68 characters, and is
exactly 68 bytes long:

X5O!P%@AP[4\PZX54(P^)7CC)7}$EICAR-STANDARD-ANTIVIRUS-TEST-FILE!$H+H*

The first 68 characters is the known string. It may be optionally appended by
any combination of whitespace characters with the total file length not
exceeding 128 characters. The only whitespace characters allowed are the space
character, tab, LF, CR, CTRL-Z. To keep things simple the file uses only upper
case letters, digits and punctuation marks, and does not include spaces. The
only thing to watch out for when typing in the test file is that the third
character is the capital letter “O”, not the digit zero.

This test file has been provided to EICAR for distribution as the “EICAR
Standard Anti-Virus Test File”, and it satisfies all the criteria listed above.
It is safe to pass around, because it is not a virus, and does not include any
fragments of viral code. Most products react to it as if it were a virus (though
they typically report it with an obvious name, such as “EICAR-AV-Test”).

The file is a legitimate DOS program, and produces sensible results when run

(IT PRINTS THE MESSAGE “EICAR-STANDARD-ANTIVIRUS-TEST-FILE!”).



> You are encouraged to make use of the EICAR test file. If you are aware of
> people who are looking for real viruses “for test purposes”, bring the test
> file to their attention. If you are aware of people who are discussing the
> possibility of an industry-standard test file, tell them about www.eicar.org,
> and point them at this article.



DOWNLOAD ANTI MALWARE TESTFILE

In order to facilitate various scenarios, we provide 4 files for download. The
first, eicar.com, contains the ASCII string as described above. The second file,
eicar.com.txt, is a copy of this file with a different filename. Some readers
reported problems when downloading the first file, which can be circumvented
when using the second version. Just download and rename the file to “eicar.com”.
That will do the trick. The third version contains the test file inside a zip
archive. A good anti-virus scanner will spot a ‘virus’ inside an archive. The
last version is a zip archive containing the third file. This file can be used
to see whether the virus scanner checks archives more than only one level deep.

Once downloaded run your AV scanner. It should detect at least the file
“eicar.com”. Good scanners will detect the ‘virus’ in the single zip archive and
may be even in the double zip archive. Once detected the scanner might not allow
you any access to the file(s) anymore. You might not even be allowed by the
scanner to delete these files. This is caused by the scanner which puts the file
into quarantaine. The test file will be treated just like any other real virus
infected file. Read the user’s manual of your AV scanner what to do or contact
the vendor/manufacturer of your AV scanner.



HOW TO DELETE THE TEST FILE FROM YOUR PC?

We understand (from the many emails we receive) that it might be difficult for
you to delete the test file from your PC. After all, your scanner believes it is
a virus infected file and does not allow you to access it anymore. At this point
we must refer to our standard answer concerning support for the test file. We
are sorry to tell you that EICAR cannot and will not provide AV scanner specific
support. The best source to get such information from is the vendor of the tool
which you purchased.

Please contact the support people of your vendor. They have the required
expertise to help you in the usage of the tool. Needless to say that you should
have read the user’s manual first before contacting them.

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