This Is Detection In A Post Modern World...
Malicious Software Detection
By: Steven Alexander
Malicious software detection; the matter at hand. There are television
commercials that claim a computer system can be 100% cleaned up with a single click of the mouse along
with $49.95. Unfortunately this claim appears to be somewhat of a stretch. First of all, how can
any web based software application guarantee that it has a certifiable cleaned computer? It
cannot.
The problem lies in the fact that many variants of malicious software have
the ability to 'hide themselves' and cloak their presence along with the ability for reliable detection
and elimination.
Let's take an average computer with the usual software programs installed,
a couple hundred pictures, a handful of documents, a couple of gigabyte's of music, and user programs for
running a business. We may easily have 250,000+ separate files on the hard drive in this case. That is
a quarter of a million files. Of course not all of which are capable of carrying a virus payload, but it
is easy to see the problem of (1) infected file hiding or evading detection. It only takes (1) file to spawn
further infection in the future. This is why a 100% certifiable clean hard drive is most
critical.
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