File extension Details of CMD, CMD, COD, COM, COM, COM, CPP, VBE, DLL

OS/2

Company / developer:
  IBM Corporation

OS/2

OS/2 is a computer operating system, initially created by Microsoft and IBM, then later developed by IBM exclusively. The name stands for "Operating System/2," because it was introduced as part of the same generation change release as IBM's "Personal System/2 (PS/2)" line of second-generation Personal Computers. OS/2 is no longer marketed by IBM, and IBM standard support for OS/2 was discontinued on December 31, 2006. Currently, Serenity Systems sells OS/2 under the brand name eComStation.

OS/2 was intended as a protected mode successor of PC-DOS and Microsoft Windows. Notably, basic system calls were modeled after MS-DOS calls; their names even started with "Dos" and it was possible to create "Family Mode" applications: text mode applications that could work on both systems. Because of this heritage, OS/2 is like Windows in many ways, but it also shares similarities with Unix and Xenix.

OS/2 is also remembered for being one of the first major operating system to have its own advocacy group. Team OS/2 was a grassroots, ad-hoc organization of volunteers, who promoted and supported the operating system and applications designed for it.

OS/2

Company / developer:
  IBM Corporation

OS/2

OS/2 is a computer operating system, initially created by Microsoft and IBM, then later developed by IBM exclusively. The name stands for "Operating System/2," because it was introduced as part of the same generation change release as IBM's "Personal System/2 (PS/2)" line of second-generation Personal Computers. OS/2 is no longer marketed by IBM, and IBM standard support for OS/2 was discontinued on December 31, 2006. Currently, Serenity Systems sells OS/2 under the brand name eComStation.

OS/2 was intended as a protected mode successor of PC-DOS and Microsoft Windows. Notably, basic system calls were modeled after MS-DOS calls; their names even started with "Dos" and it was possible to create "Family Mode" applications: text mode applications that could work on both systems. Because of this heritage, OS/2 is like Windows in many ways, but it also shares similarities with Unix and Xenix.

OS/2 is also remembered for being one of the first major operating system to have its own advocacy group. Team OS/2 was a grassroots, ad-hoc organization of volunteers, who promoted and supported the operating system and applications designed for it.

Java

Company / developer:
  Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Java

refers to a number of computer software products and specifications that together provide a system for developing application software and deploying it in a cross-platform environment. It is used in a wide variety of computing platforms spanning from embedded devices and mobile phones.

Java, a programming language, is a core component of Sun's Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities. Java applications are typically compiled to bytecode which can run on any Java virtual machine (JVM) regardless of computer architecture.

MS DOS

Company / developer:
  Microsoft Corporation

MS-DOS

MS-DOS (short for Microsoft Disk Operating System) is an operating system commercialized by Microsoft. It was the most commonly used member of the DOS family of operating systems and was the dominant operating system for computers based on the Intel 8086 family of microprocessors, particularly the IBM PC and compatibles, during the 1980s. It was gradually replaced on consumer desktop computers by operating systems offering a graphical user interface (GUI), in particular by various generations of the Microsoft Windows operating system. It was originally known as QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System) and 86-DOS.

MS-DOS was originally released in 1981 and had eight major versions released before Microsoft stopped development in 2000. It was the key product in Microsoft's growth from a programming languages company to a diverse software development firm, providing the company with essential revenue and marketing resources. It was also the underlying basic operating system on which early versions of Windows ran as a GUI.

EICAR

Company / developer:
  eicar e.V.

EICAR

If you are active in the anti-virus research field, then you will regularly receive requests for virus samples. Some requests are easy to deal with: they come from fellow-researchers whom you know well, and whom you trust. Using strong encryption, you can send them what they have asked for by almost any medium (including across the Internet) without any real risk.

Other requests come from people you have never heard from before. There are relatively few laws (though some countries do have them) preventing the secure exchange of viruses between consenting individuals, though it is clearly irresponsible for you simply to make viruses available to anyone who asks. Your best response to a request from an unknown person is simply to decline politely.

A third set of requests come from exactly the people you might think would be least likely to want viruses "users of anti-virus software".

They want some way of checking that they have deployed their software correctly, or of deliberately generating a "virus incident in order to test their corporate procedures, or of showing others in the organisation what they would see if they were hit by a virus".

Obviously, there is considerable intellectual justification for testing anti-virus software against real viruses. If you are an anti-virus vendor, then you do this (or should do it!) before every release of your product, in order to ensure that it really works. However, you do not (or should not!) perform your tests in a "real" environment. You use (or should use!) a secure, controlled and independent laboratory environment within which your virus collection is maintained.

Using real viruses for testing in the real world is rather like setting fire to the dustbin in your office to see whether the smoke detector is working. Such a test will give meaningful results, but with unappealing, unacceptable risks.

Since it is unacceptable for you to send out real viruses for test or demonstration purposes, you need a file that can safely be passed around and which is obviously non-viral, but which your anti-virus software will react to as if it were a virus.

If your test file is a program, then it should also produce sensible results if it is executed. Also, because you probably want to avoid shipping a pseudo-viral file along with your anti-virus product, your test file should be short and simple, so that your customers can easily create copies of it for themselves.

The good news is that such a test file already exists. A number of anti-virus researchers have already worked together to produce a file that their (and many other) products "detect" as if it were a virus.

Agreeing on one file for such purposes simplifies matters for users: in the past, most vendors had their own pseudo-viral test files which their product would react to, but which other products would ignore.

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").

The file is a legitimate DOS program, and produces sensible results when run (it prints the message "EICAR-STANDARD-ANTIVIRUS-TEST-FILE!").

It is also short and simple - in fact, it consists entirely of printable ASCII characters, so that it can easily be created with a regular text editor. Any anti-virus product that supports the EICAR test file should detect it in any file providing that the file starts with the following 68 characters, and is exactly 68 bytes long:

X5O!P%@AP[4\PZX54(P^)7CC)7}$EICAR-STANDARD-ANTIVIRUS-TEST-FILE!$H+H*

The first 68 characters is the known string. It may be optionally appended by any combination of whitespace characters with the total file length not exceeding 128 characters. The only whitespace characters allowed are the space character, tab, LF, CR, CTRL-Z. To keep things simple the file uses only upper case letters, digits and punctuation marks, and does not include spaces. The only thing to watch out for when typing in the test file is that the third character is the capital letter "O", not the digit zero.

You are encouraged to make use of the EICAR test file. If you are aware of people who are looking for real viruses "for test purposes", bring the test file to their attention. If you are aware of people who are discussing the possibility of an industry-standard test file, tell them about www.eicar.org, and point them at this article.

In order to facilitate various scenarios, we provide 4 files for download. The first, eicar.com, contains the ASCII string as described above. The second file, eicar.com.txt, is a copy of this file with a different filename. Some readers reported problems when downloading the first file, which can be circumvented when using the second version. Just download and rename the file to "eicar.com". That will do the trick. The third version contains the test file inside a zip ARCHIVEe. A good anti-virus scanner will spot a 'virus' inside an ARCHIVEe. The last version is a zip ARCHIVEes containing the third file. This file can be used to see whether the virus scanner checks ARCHIVEes more than only one level deep.

Once downloaded run your AV scanner. It should detect at least the file "eicar.com". Good scanners will detect the 'virus' in the single zip ARCHIVEe and may be even in the double zip ARCHIVEe. Once detected the scanner might not allow you any access to the file(s) anymore. You might not even be allowed by the scanner to delete these files. This is caused by the scanner which puts the file into quarantaine. The test file will be treated just like any other real virus infected file. Read the user's manual of your AV scanner what to do or contact the vendor/manufacturer of your AV scanner.

Important note: EICAR cannot be held responsible when these files or your AV scanner in combination with these files cause any damage to your computer. YOU DOWNLOAD THESE FILES AT YOUR OWN RISK. Download these files only if you are sufficiently secure in the usage of your AV scanner. EICAR cannot and will not provide any help to remove these files from your computer. Please contact the manufacturer/vendor of your AV scanner to seek such help.

MS DOS

Company / developer:
  Microsoft Corporation

MS-DOS

MS-DOS (short for Microsoft Disk Operating System) is an operating system commercialized by Microsoft. It was the most commonly used member of the DOS family of operating systems and was the dominant operating system for computers based on the Intel 8086 family of microprocessors, particularly the IBM PC and compatibles, during the 1980s. It was gradually replaced on consumer desktop computers by operating systems offering a graphical user interface (GUI), in particular by various generations of the Microsoft Windows operating system. It was originally known as QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System) and 86-DOS.

MS-DOS was originally released in 1981 and had eight major versions released before Microsoft stopped development in 2000. It was the key product in Microsoft's growth from a programming languages company to a diverse software development firm, providing the company with essential revenue and marketing resources. It was also the underlying basic operating system on which early versions of Windows ran as a GUI.

Xcode

Company / developer:
  Apple, Inc.

Xcode

Xcode is Apple's premiere development environment for Mac OS X. In addition to being packaged on the DVD with every copy of Mac OS X, the latest Xcode developer release is always available for free to ADC members and includes all the tools you need to create, debug, and optimize your applications. At the heart of the Xcode tools package is the Xcode IDE, a graphical workbench that tightly integrates a professional text editor, a robust build system, a debugger, and the powerful GCC compiler capable of targeting Intel and PowerPC regardless of host platform. Xcode is both easy to use, and yet powerful enough to build the largest Mac OS X applications. The complete Mac OS X developer tools chain is distributed as part of Xcode; these tools include Interface Builder, Instruments, Dashcode, the WebObjects framework, and the complete reference documentation, to name just a few.

Microsoft Visual Studio

Company / developer:
  Microsoft Corporation

New tools tailored to help you take on your software development challenges.

Visual Studio provides a range of tools that offer many benefits for individual developers and software development teams:

• Be more productive and obtain faster results
• Build dynamic Windows, Web, mobile, and Office-based solutions
• Communicate and collaborate more effectively within your software teams
• Ensure quality early and often throughout the development process

A dynamic-link library (DLL) is a module that contain functions and data that can be used by another module (application or DLL).

A DLL can define two kinds of functions: exported and internal. The exported functions are intended to be called by other modules, as well as from within the DLL where they are defined. Internal functions are typically intended to be called only from within the DLL where they are defined. Although a DLL can export data, its data is generally used only by its functions. However, there is nothing to prevent another module from reading or writing that address.

DLLs provide a way to modularize applications so that their functionality can be updated and reused more easily. DLLs also help reduce memory overhead when several applications use the same functionality at the same time, because although each application receives its own copy of the DLL data, the applications share the DLL code.

The Windows application programming interface (API) is implemented as a set of DLLs, so any process that uses the Windows API uses dynamic linking.

Microsoft Windows

Company / developer:
  Microsoft Corporation

Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is a family of operating systems by Microsoft. They can run on several types of platforms such as servers, embedded devices and, most typically, on personal computers. Microsoft first introduced an operating environment named Windows in November 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing trend of graphical user interfaces (GUI) popularized by the Macintosh. Microsoft Windows eventually came to dominate the world's personal computer market.

Norton SystemWorks

Company / developer:
  Symantec Corporation

Norton SystemWorks

Enhance your computer’s performance with Norton SystemWorks Basic Edition. This system-boosting solution solves many PC problems, keeping your computer healthy and running at peak performance. Norton SystemWorks automatically diagnoses and fixes hard-drive errors, removes unwanted Internet clutter such as cookies and Web files, and allows you to optimize your Windows settings from a single screen. It’s also a powerful partner to Norton Internet Security, Norton AntiVirus, and other security software. Enhance your computer’s performance with Norton SystemWorks.