MSAV

"Microsoft antivirus" redirects here. For the later Microsoft anti-virus product, see Microsoft Security Essentials. For a malware masquerading as an antivirus, see MS Antivirus (malware).
Microsoft Anti-Virus

Microsoft Anti-Virus
Original author(s) Microsoft Corporation
Developer(s) Central Point Software
Initial release March 30, 1993
Development status Discontinued
Operating system DOS, Windows 3.1x
Platform IA-32
Size MSAV.EXE: 236 KB
VSAFE.COM: 62 KB
Virus Definitions: 60 KB
Available in English
Type Antivirus software
License Proprietary

Microsoft Anti-Virus (MSAV) was an antivirus program introduced by Microsoft for its MS-DOS operating system. The program first appeared in MS-DOS version 6.0 (1993 [1]) and last appeared in MS-DOS 6.22. The first version of the antivirus program was basic, had no inbuilt update facility (updates had to be obtained from a BBS and manually installed by the user), and could scan for 1,234 different viruses.[2] Microsoft Anti-Virus for Windows (MWAV), included as part of the package, was a front end that allowed MSAV to run properly underneath Windows 3.1x.

History

Microsoft Anti-Virus was supplied by Central Point Software Inc. (later acquired by Symantec in 1994 and integrated into Symantec's Norton AntiVirus product) and was essentially a stripped down version of the Central Point Anti-Virus (CPAV) product which, in turn, Central Point Software Inc., had licensed from Carmel Software Engineering in Haifa, Israel. Carmel Software sold the product as Turbo Anti-Virus both domestically and abroad.

Microsoft Anti-Virus for Windows was also provided by Central Point Software.[3]

Features

MSAV featured the "Detect and Clean" strategy, and the detection of boot sector and Trojan horse-type viruses (which were typical virus problems at that time).

The program also had an anti-stealth and check sum feature that could be used to detect any changes in normal files. This technology was intended to make up for the unavailability of regular update packages. The final update of MSAV was released in June 1996 by Symantec,[4] it added the ability to detect polymorphic viruses and the virus definitions were updated to scan for a total of 2,371 viruses.

VSafe TSR

VSafe was a terminate and stay resident component of MSAV that provided real-time virus protection.

By default, VSafe does the following:

There are more features that can be enabled, VSafe can:

VSafe had a number of virus definitions embedded within its executable, but was capable of loading additional signatures (updates) from an external definition file.

See also

References

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