Scanning Technologies

The scan engine at the heart of IWSVA includes a variety of scanning technologies to protect against all types of viruses and Internet threats.

• Deep Scan—Deep Scan technology traces the program’s running flow to locate viruses buried deep in the body of the file. The speed related to the virus scanning is comparatively fast and is independent of the size of the file being scanned.

• SoftMice—This technology provides enhanced virus scanning for polymorphic and mutation viruses, and augments virus-pattern-based scans by emulating file execution. The results are then analyzed in a controlled environment for evidence of malicious intent with little impact on system performance.

• Wildcard Virus Scanner—Detects virus variants without additional overhead. Most "new" viruses are simply modifications of existing viruses, wherein the message is changed or the destructive payload modified. These modifications can fool antivirus systems that rely solely on pattern matching.

• ScriptTrap Heuristic Scanning—Script viruses are becoming increasingly common. Most are written in Visual Basic (VB) Script and Java Script languages. Because of the ease and speed with which malicious hackers can create scripting viruses, Trend Micro developed ScriptTrap to control this threat even in the absence of an exact pattern.

• Encoded File Scanning—Both UUencoded and MIME formats are scanned.