In 1991, Symantec released the
first version of Norton AntiVirus. Norton was a popular brand name among
computer technophiles from the well-known and successful Norton Utilities
program. Programs like Norton AntiVirus are designed to find and eliminate
viruses from a computer, usually with three goals in mind:
_ Make the virus stop doing harm
to the computer it has infected
_ Stop the spread of the virus
_ Limit any further harm the
virus can do
Early antivirus programs had a
database that contained information about each known virus. Chiefly, the
database would contain some of the characters that were found in each known
virus. Then, as the antivirus program scanned files on the computer, it would
simply compare the information in the scanned files with the information about
each known virus.
When there was a match, the
antivirus program had found a virus.
Norton Virus Scan was the first
antivirus program available. It contained signatures for only several dozen
viruses. In those days (reckoned by our sundials and hourglasses) it was
sufficient to update signatures every few months. These early programs had no
“real-time” detection mechanism; instead, they could only scan a computer to
look for viruses that were already present on the computer.
No comments:
Post a Comment