
Conditions for scanners under VTC test procedure:
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In order to be automatically testable, a scanner must conform to the set 
of conditions listed below. The conditions are the essential basis for
processing parallel test batches without manual intervention (some scanners
used up to 72 hours for the file test). Moreover, automatic evaluation of
huge scanner log files was performed with awk-scripts. We also regard those 
conditions to be fairly reasonable, not too restrictive, as well as being
useful for both users and developers because they allow them to test it 
more easily.

Several of the scanners in this test did NOT conform to those conditions. 
Very few even had to be withdrawn from the test, whereas some required 
"manual support". The task to test these non-conforming scanners was very 
difficult and time-consuming.  


Here is the list of conditions.

A) Common conditions:
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A1) The scanner must be able to create a report file in a specified directory
    (at least not on the drive where the viruses are located).  

A2) The full path of the scanned files must be present in the report
    file. Long paths MUST NOT be abbreviated, e.g. by using "..." instead
    of several intermediate directory names. Shortening the file paths is
    acceptable when displaying them on the screen, but *not* in the
    report file.

A3) The scanner must be able to run in "scan-only" mode. If its default
    mode is to disinfect automatically all viruses found, there should be
    an option to run it in "scan-only" (i.e., no disinfection) mode.

A4) The scanner must be able to run unattended - and not to stop on
    each infected object and request user input. When scanning is 
    completed, the scanner must be able to exit automatically and 
    not wait for additional user intervention (including return keys).

A5) The scanner must be able to run from the command line (DOS Versions only),
    scan a subdirectory tree (not just whole drives) and create a report file
    with a name and location supplied by the user.

A6) If the scanner issues an audible alarm each time it detects a
    virus, there should be a way to turn the sound off. This is not
    necessary if the alarm is issued only once - at the end of the
    scanning, but the alarm should be able to stop on its own, i.e.
    without requiring user intervention.

A7) The only limit of the size of the report file that the scanner
    creates must be the amount of free disk space.

A8) The scanner should be able to test objects on netdrives and obey the
    given user rights (i.e. read only, access denied).

A9) The scanner must not move all files which it regards as infected
    to another drive or a specified directory.



F) Conditions for testing AV-products against file viruses:
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F1) The report file must contain the directory path, the file name of 
    the suspious or infected file.

F2) The scanner must be able to scan files with extensions defined by
    the user, or at least be able to scan files with extensions COM, 
    EXE, SYS, BAT and CMD.

F3) The scanner must be able to run without problems on a huge
    directory tree - i.e., something like 30,000 directories containing
    85,000 files should not be a problem for it.



B) Conditions for testing AV-products against boot viruses:
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B1) It should be possible to scan multiple diskettes without leaving
    the scanner. The scanner should prompt the user to change the
    diskettes. It must request ONE AND THE SAME input from the user
    between two diskettes, regardless of whether a virus is found or not.
    If the scanner does not have the option to scan multiple diskettes, 
    it must have the option to append the results of the scanning procedure 
    to an existing report.

B1a) If the scanner doesn't work with simboot it must be able to scan the
     images directly.

B2) The report file generated when scanning multiple diskettes must
    contain information about all the scanned diskettes - not only about
    the infected ones, or only about the last one.


M) Conditions for testing AV-products against macro viruses:
------------------------------------------------------------

M1) The scanner must be able to scan macro viruses.

M2) The report file must contain the directory path, the file name of 
    the suspious or infected file.

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