Last month, I had mentioned Panda’s new, 1 minute online virus superfast scanning service called NanoScan. Now I am going to write about another interesting online anti-virus file scanning service called VirusTotal. VirusTotal is a free online service that combines the heuristic capabilities of the following 32 anti-virus software engines:

AhnLab (V3), Aladdin (eSafe), ALWIL (Avast! Antivirus), Authentium (Command Antivirus), Avira (AntiVir), Bit9 (FileAdvisor), Cat Computer Services (Quick Heal), ClamAV (ClamAV), CA Inc. (Vet), Doctor Web, Ltd. (DrWeb), Eset Software (NOD32), ewido networks (ewido anti-malware), Fortinet (Fortinet), FRISK Software (F-Prot), F-Secure (F-Secure), Hacksoft (The ,Hacker), Ikarus Software (Ikarus), Kaspersky Lab (AVP), McAfee (VirusScan), Microsoft (Malware Protection), Norman (Norman Antivirus), Panda Software (Panda Platinum), Prevx (Prevx1), Secure Computing (Webwasher), Softwin (BitDefender), Sophos (SAV), Sunbelt Software (Antivirus) ,Symantec (Norton Antivirus), UNA Corp (UNA), VirusBlokAda (VBA32), VirusBuster (VirusBuster) and Grisoft (AVG)

There are two ways to upload the file for analysis:

1) Upload via the web browser using SSL
2) Send the file as an attachment to an email to scan@virustotal.com with subject as SCAN

After the scan is completed, a detail tabular report is presented with the results for each anti-virus engine like this:

Antivirus Version Update Result
AhnLab-V3 2007.5.10.0 05.11.2007 no virus found
AntiVir 7.4.0.15 05.12.2007 no virus found
Authentium 4.93.8 05.12.2007 no virus found
Avast 4.7.997.0 05.11.2007 no virus found
AVG 7.5.0.467 05.12.2007 no virus found
and so on…