Computers are everywhere in our lives. They assist us in play and work, monitor patients in hospitals, and manage crucial manufacturing processes. However, this convenience comes with a cost since more devices that use computers are a target for hackers.
Antivirus protection scans programs and files to detect potential threats. It serves as a real-time defense against cyber attacks. It can identify infected programs and files by their telltale sign – two lines or assembly code that replaces the stack pointer for instance and then compares them with the database of known malicious software. If the program is found to match the antivirus software, it stops it from running, or moves it to quarantine so that it can be thoroughly analyzed and scanned.
Unfortunately, malware creators are constantly creating new programs with distinctive and more subtle signatures, so antivirus programs have to constantly update their databases. Once a virus is identified and added into the database of detection hackers will be unable to use the same signature on other machines.
This is why the majority of reliable antivirus programs have numerous additional features to guard against a wider array of malware threats. These include: