Link Archive
For quite a while, I’ve been
disturbed by the emphasis on language in computer science. One result of that emphasis is
programmers who are C++ experts but can’t write programs that do what they’re supposed to.
The typical computer science response is that programmers need to use the right
programming/specification/development language instead of/in addition to C++. The typical
industrial response is to provide the programmer with better debugging tools, on the
theory that we can obtain good programs by putting a monkey at a keyboard and
automatically finding the errors in its code.
This test file has been provided
to EICAR for distribution as the "EICAR Standard Anti-Virus Test File", and it satisfies
all the criteria listed above. It is safe to pass around, because it is not a virus, and
does not include any fragments of viral code. Most products react to it as if it were a
virus (though they typically report it with an obvious name, such as "EICAR-AV-Test").