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Updating and Upgrading
7
VirusScan Software
Developing an updating strategy
Although they are the equivalent of electronic vandals, serious virus writers
research and work at their "craft." They delight in introducing new technical
twists or unexpected attack strategies into their creations and take pride in
their "successes." Unfortunately, their successes frequently mean data loss,
system instability, or other negative effects for you. To counter their threats,
McAfee Anti-Virus Emergency Response Team (AVERT) researchers must
release frequent updates to the virus definitions database and technical
enhancements or upgrades to the scan engine that VirusScan software uses.
Without updated files, VirusScan software might not recognize new forms of
malicious software or detect new virus strains when it encounters them.
What are .DAT files?
Virus definition, or .DAT, files contain up-to-date virus signatures and other
information that McAfee anti-virus products use to protect your computer
against the thousands of computer viruses in circulation. McAfee releases new
.DAT files weekly to provide protection against the approximately 300 new
viruses that appear each month.
With this VirusScan release, McAfee has introduced a new incremental .DAT,
or iDAT, technology that consists of small parcels that contain only the virus
definitions that have changed between weekly .DAT file releases—not the
entire .DAT file set. This development means that you can download .DAT file
updates much faster, and at a far lower cost in bandwidth, than ever before.
To learn more about the new technology, see
iDAT Technology."
What is the scan engine?
The Olympus scan engine is at the heart of McAfee anti-virus software. The
engine contains the program logic necessary to scan files at particular points,
process and pattern-match virus definitions with data it finds in your files,
decrypt and run virus code in an emulated environment, apply heuristic
techniques to recognize new viruses, and remove infectious code from
legitimate files. The remaining parts of the VirusScan package help to feed files
to the engine for processing, hook into various parts of your computer's
operating system to intercept files as they execute or as you work with them,
and provide an interface you can use to configure various scan settings.
Appendix D, "Understanding
User's Guide
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