Is there really not much difference between AV and AS?

[Guest]

[Byakuya]

Don't let the angry emoticon confuse you.  I just wanted to use it once in a while to catch your attention .

I haven't used anti-virus and anti-spyware for a long time (except running CFP 3's on-demand), but I remember ST and SAS also scans the registry, wheras AV's don't?

What started my question was my amazement how the first time I ran the CFP 3 on-demand AV scanner and it took 55 seconds to finish.  That's the fastest AV scanner ever for me.

[Melih]

hi Byakuya

The main difference between AV and AS is that a virus is a code that attaches itself to another executable, whereas spyware, trojan etc is a standalone program/executable. hence scanning for these things are slightly different even though nowadays scanning engine should have both.

thanks
Melih

[poutnik]

Hmm, according to Avast antivirus forum,

file attaching viruses are said to be very rare in these days.
More often they are standalone files, or no files on disk at all like worms...
I suppose the main difference is

AV aims to malware that spreads quickly, or spreading is significant part of its behavior.
AS aims malware that is sitting on his place, prefering being sofisticated and well hidden.

But both malware can time by time show behavior of the other group...

[Luketan]

lol.

[Info-Sec]

lol.

..... care to explain?

[Luketan]

..... care to explain?

Yes. 

[MrBrian]

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,140211-c,spyware/article.html

[Tags:]