
Originally Posted by
an087535
Question One: Can you scan a file without downloading it?
Answer: Of course not! That's why you should download it in RAR or ZIP form. Why is answered in Question 2.
Question Two: When you download a RAR or ZIP file, can you get a virus?
Answer: When you download it, you do not get the virus unless you extract it or open the program.
You can only get a virus via executing the executable, unless you already have a virus, then it may force it to execute.
Question Four: Which viruses are so called "Safe"?
Answer: Upload an injector into a virus scan website and see which ones come up. Those are called "False Positives" which are nothing to worry about because all an Injector does is inject files into the selected process.
Actually, and injector that isn't under the users control is quite dangerous, if the virus was an exe, and the virus's supporter was a dll(virus supporter being the dll assuring you don't close the actual virus) and it injected the supporter in all the processes it would be a hell of a mess.
How to find out if your file is a fake? [Manual]
[Referring to 3rd Party Programs Like a Auto Login Program] Okay, download the file, rename to ____.txt, then just open it and read it. If it looks like it will take your password delete it and everyone goes home happy.
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No, you can't read executables as text files.
What is a False Positive?
A false positive occurs when a virus scanner erroneously detects a 'virus' in a non-infected file. False positives result when the signature used to detect a particular virus is not unique to the virus - i.e. the same signature appears in legitimate, non-infected software.
A false positive can also be caused when your AV detected the target it is scanning uses APIs that can be used for malicious purposes, like accessing other memory pages. These commonly used APIs are WriteProcessMemory, and ReadProcessMemory, little know what they actually do though. Signatures are generally used to identify already-known viruses, but are becoming more useless as viruses themself become dynamic as they spread.
As an addition, if you see those screen-saver adds, don't download any of that shit, as far as windows knows. Screen-saver files are exactly like executable files, just a different extention.