Sometimes you have to install an antivirus on your infrastructure or add virus detecting features to your application, then you have to test if it works… I don’t know you but I usually don’t have a virus available to test if the AV is correctly configured and I don’t want to test the system with a real virus.

So here comes EICAR Test File to help you ;)

Basically it’s an standard string that all the Anti-Virus software recognize as a virus (and it’s completely harmless).

So if you open a notepad and copy this string:

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

Once you save it, you have a “virus” to test your installation.

By the way, if you save it and you have an antivirus running in your machine it will detect it as a virus, so you might have to deactivate it during the tests.

It can be really handy!