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Safety ratings and user comments (disinfection, in-the-wild locations, reverse engineering reports, etc.) on malware and URLs, free and easy.

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About VirusTotal

VirusTotal is a service that analyzes suspicious files and URLs enabling the identification of viruses, worms, trojans and other kinds of malicious content detected by antivirus engines and web analysis toolbars.

VirusTotal's main characteristics are:

In 2007 VirusTotal was recognized by the American edition of PC World magazine as one of the 100 best products of the year in the Security web site category.

You can find more information about this award in the original The 100 best products of 2007 article.
In 2008 VirusTotal uploader was ranked in the security section's first place of the 101 Fantastic Freebies list developed by the US edition of the PC World magazine.

You can find more information about this award in the original 101 Fantastic Freebies article.

For more information or in order to make comments, suggestions or report bugs please contact us at .

Credits

VirusTotal is a service developed by Hispasec Sistemas, an independent IT Security laboratory, that uses several command line versions of antivirus engines, updated regularly with official signature files published by their respective developers.

This is a list of the companies that participate in VirusTotal with their antivirus engines.

VirusTotal also makes use of a number of file characterization tools:

With respect to the URL analysis engines, these are the companies that should receive the credits:

Warning

VirusTotal is not a substitute for any antivirus software installed in a PC, since it only scans individual files on demand. It does not offer permanent protection for users' systems either.

Although the detection rate achieved by the use of multiple antivirus engines is far superior to that offered by just one product, these results DO NOT guarantee the harmlessness of a file.

Currently, there is no solution that offers 100% effectiveness in detecting viruses and malware. You may become a victim of deceitful advertising, if you buy such a product under those premises.

Why using VirusTotal for antivirus testing is a bad idea?

Hispasec is rather tired of repeating that VirusTotal was not designed as a tool to perform AV comparative analyses, but as a tool that checks suspicious samples with several AV programs and helps AV labs by forwarding them the malware they failed to detect. Those who use VirusTotal to perform AV comparative analyses should know that they are making many implicit errors in the methodology, the most obvious being:

These are just two examples illustrating why using VirusTotal for antivirus testing is a bad idea, you can read more about this issue in our blog. The Prevx team also made an entry in its blog discussing the matter.