Fighting Viruses

Fighting Viruses

GENERIC ANTIVIRAL PROGRAM flags activities--such as the alteration of critical sites in RAM or particular files on disk--that are likely to arise from a virus in action. Preventing these illicit acts will not eliminate the virus but can stop it from infecting additional programs or interfering with the computer's normal operation.

SIGNATURE SCANNER searches a user's disks looking for fragments of program code that appear in known viruses.

ANTIVIRAL SNAPSHOTS capture mathematical "fingerprints" of crucial programs and data. Subsequent changes strongly suggest viral infection. Advanced algorithms can use the original fingerprints to recover a pristine program from the virus-altered version.