EICAR Test
The EICAR test was developed by the European Institute for Computer Antivirus Research (EICAR) to provide a safe, easy way to test whether your antivirus software is doing its job. All that's required to perform the test is to download the eicar.com file and double click on it like you are trying to open it. If the antivirus software on your computer is working, it should detect it as the EICAR Test Virus. Of course, it's not a virus but instead a harmless 70 byte file that most or all antivirus software programs are supposed to detect for testing purposes only. It will not do any harm at all to your machine.
Additionally, a zipped (compressed once) version and a double-zipped (compressed twice) version are provided to see if your antivirus software can detect it in compressed format.
How to perform the test
- Make sure that your antivirus software is enabled.
- Follow this link to the EICAR TEST VIRUS PAGE. At the bottom of this page are four links to download different versions of the test file. They are a .COM (executable), .TXT (text), and two zipped files (.ZIP) that contain the Eicar.com file (the second is double-zipped). Try downloading these files. If your Antivirus software is working, it should immediately detect any of these files as the "EICAR Test Virus".
How to test it worked
- If Symantec AntiVirus does detect the test file as a virus, then your antivirus software has passed the test. Just click on the Delete button and cancel out of the download.
- If Symantec AntiVirus doesn't detect the virus, confirm that File System Realtime Protection is enabled by clicking Configure in the main menu bar of the Symantec/Norton AntiVirus console and choosing File System RealTime Protection. The checkbox on the resulting screen that says Enable File System Realtime Protection should be checked. If you do have File System Realtime Protection enabled, then there may be something wrong with your settings and/or the installation of Symantec/Norton AntiVirus.
Last Updated: 04/24/2008