5 replies to this topic

[Mike Rochip]

Actually, I meant question, not qustion .

Does anyone know which file types are safe to exclude from online scans?

Specifically right now I'm wondering about .chm and .rar files. Also wondering about image files in general such as .gif, .jpg, etc.

Any help would be appreciated!

Thanks in advance.

[Andavari]

.chm files contain files within them therefore they should always be scanned.

.jpg is scanned by default by most antivirus apps since they can be used to infect/exploit a system.

.gif I don't know if it can cause an infection/exploit or not.

Scanning any archive format (.rar, .zip, .cab, etc.,) is up to you as the scanner will only be able to detect infected files within the archive but won't be able to disinfect the file inside the archive. You have to be careful what you tell a scanner to do with an archive that has an infection in it because it will result into the whole archive being deleted or quarantined since files inside archives can't be cleaned.

A general rule of thumb with archives is once they're scanned there isn't a need to keep re-scanning them with each antivirus scan since they are most likely not going to change and most notably it wastes a significant amount of time to scan them each time. However any newly downloaded software or files that are stored within an archive should be scanned.

I personally have my installed antivirus configured to ignore some old archives (see screenshot) that are rather huge and extremely slow to scan since I know they won't change, e.g.; I tell my av to ignore the .cab archives in the MS Office Cache and the .rar archive backups from my old computer.

With that said there was an exploit sometime ago that would inject viral code into .rar archives - I haven't followed the incident so I don't know what the outcome was.

[Mike Rochip]

Thanks Andavari. I'll look at files one by one just to be safe.

[krit86lr]

Mike Rochip, on Apr 2 2006, 02:37 AM, said:

Actually, I meant question, not qustion .

Does anyone know which file types are safe to exclude from online scans?

Specifically right now I'm wondering about .chm and .rar files. Also wondering about image files in general such as .gif, .jpg, etc.

Any help would be appreciated!

Thanks in advance.

Are just trying to speed up the scanning Mike?

[Mike Rochip]

krit86lr, on Apr 2 2006, 10:35 PM, said:

Are just trying to speed up the scanning Mike?

Yes. Some files are taking a very long time such as the OpenOffice installer files.

I need to transfer a lot of files to CD but the last batch of CDs I bought were a cheapo brand and they degrade rather quickly so obviously I can't use them for anything important. Once I get a quality brand I'll give my PC a long overdue Spring cleaning !

Note: This is Rochip Post #500! w00t! w00t!

krit should feel priveledged that I have honored her with Rochip Post #500 but she is probably just rolling her eyes ...

[Andavari]

Mike Rochip, on Apr 5 2006, 06:06 PM, said:

I need to transfer a lot of files to CD but the last batch of CDs I bought were a cheapo brand and they degrade rather quickly so obviously I can't use them for anything important. Once I get a quality brand I'll give my PC a long overdue Spring cleaning !

Well if you're going to permanently archive files onto a CD-R it's worthwhile to scan them for obvious reasons.

Get some Taiyo Yuden CD's they are typically high in quality. You'll most likely have to buy them from a shop online because mostly el cheapo CD's are found in stores, definately don't buy any CD that says Made In China on it which is usually the case if you by a store brand.

I've never actually had a CD go kaput on me, even when using cheap/generic brands however I've dealt with CD burning software that will screw up a disc in a heartbeat. The software that burns the CD's can also be the route of their demise in some cases, as can burning at too high of a speed which can introduce more errors. What I find totally strange and was baffled at is the newest batch of Memorex CD-R's I bought now have a new speed rating on them of 24x, when just a few months ago the last batch was labeled as 52x.