Help!!! I need viruses on my computer!

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Just a quick one, i'm testing various virus/malware scanners and I need to chock my laptop full of rubbish. I tried using the obvious course but not much luck! Any advice?
 
Any advice?

Don't? There are better ways of testing the effectiveness of anti-malware apps, and best of all there are several organisations who have already done it for you! Still, if you've had such a lack of success even whilst trying to get infected, perhaps the requirement for AV is over-rated after all? ;)
 
Don't? There are better ways of testing the effectiveness of anti-malware apps, and best of all there are several organisations who have already done it for you! Still, if you've had such a lack of success even whilst trying to get infected, perhaps the requirement for AV is over-rated after all? ;)

Very true - but it's a project I have at work - real life scenarios!
 
Very true - but it's a project I have at work - real life scenarios!

Fair play :) I still find it highly amusing that you have to TRY to get infected, and still fail! Or maybe your current AV really is just that bad :p:D

EDIT: There's a point, actually. How will you know you're infected if you're randomly trying to 'collect' malware? Surely you'd need known samples to begin with? Otherwise how will you know if you're (a) clean or (b) just have a rubbish AV at that time? Perhaps contact one of the major AV/security companies and make discreet enquiries via work. Obviously they'd be loathe to hand out live viruses to Joe Public but if you have a solid reason and corporate backing etc?
 
There's a file called eicar. Which is specifically designed to test anti-spyware / anti-virus software without putting your data or network in danger.
 
There's a file called eicar. Which is specifically designed to test anti-spyware / anti-virus software without putting your data or network in danger.

Yeah, but I never did quite 'get' that. I mean, surely a text file which all main AV vendors have chosen to accept as a test virus is actually no more of a test than 'ta da - your AV is switched on, not off'? It hardly quantifies how well your AV is working etc?
 
Thanks for all the help so far! Rainmaker has a very good point - what is a test virus? All the people that we have problems with have actual malware issues - whats to say that just because a virus scanner can remove a test virus, it can remove all the other issues?
 
so what if u download a virus and it deletes an important windows file...
your windows wont start so how will u test?
 
We've had incredibly resilient virii before , from a game no-cd crack hosted on our network. We'd all run scans, only for it to propagate round the network an hour later - took us ages to get rid of it.

Go grab a pile of keygens/no-cd cracks.
 
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