Testing Your Antivirus Protection - F-SECURE CLIENT SECURITY 9.00 Administrator's Manual

Testing your antivirus protection

To test that Client Security operates correctly, you can use a special test file that is detected by Client Security
as though it were a virus.
This file, known as the EICAR Standard Anti-Virus Test File, is also detected by several other antivirus
programs. You can also use the EICAR test file to test your e-mail scanning. EICAR is the European Institute
of Computer Anti-virus Research. The Eicar info page can be found at
http://www.europe.f-secure.com/virus-info/eicar_test_file.shtml.
You can test your antivirus protection as follows:
1. You can download the EICAR test file from http://www.europe.f-secure.com/virus-info/eicar_test_file.shtml.
Alternatively, use any text editor to create the file with the following single line in it:
X5O!P%@AP[4\PZX54(P^)7CC)7}$EICAR-STANDARD-ANTIVIRUS-TEST-FILE!$H+H*
2. Save this file to any name with a .com extension, for example EICAR.COM.
Make sure that you save the file in the standard MS-DOS ASCII format. Note also that the third character
of the extension is an upper-case O, not numeral 0.
3. Now you can use this file to see what it looks like when Client Security detects a virus.
Naturally, the file is not a virus. When executed without any virus protection, EICAR.COM displays the text
EICAR-STANDARD-ANTIVIRUS-TEST-FILE! and exits.
F-Secure Client Security | Configuring virus and spyware protection | 85