Anyone know?

Can anyone explain how exactly a anti virus works..

and if possible point me in a direction to find out more.

Thnak you

I think that an anti virus program searches all files for key phrases or words and when it spots something from it's database it notifies the user of a possible virus. It also checks the file names for commonly know trojans. I'm not sure where you could get omre infor on programming one but the only place i can suggest is PlanetSourceCode



Gl,
D!m

Anti virus apps check their storage banks for patterns matching known virus patterns. If a new virus has a different pattern, more than likely the checker will pass it over and not recognize it and so they are not foolproof. However, a little is better than none when it comes to protecting your self.

You can get antivirus programs at nonags as freeware

http://www.nonags.com
goto freeware/browse/antivirus
the 1st one on the list is what I currently use.

As to how effective it is I can't say...says I have no virus bugs and so I can only assume it knows.

Later.

How effective would it be to scan for a virus (given the fact that you already know the file size)according to the file size? Am pretty sure there is the possibility of the program deleiting needed file that might have the same filesize....

Any opinions on this?.

Not a great way to go about building a virus scanner...but it is possible, just make sure you go down to the last byte and not measure the size just in kb.
Gl,
D!m