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Asked: 2016-08-25 11:26:55 +0800 CST

A Virus Scan indicated large number of known viruses - What should I do?

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I typed clamscan, to run a Virus Scan, and there was an indication that there are a few millions of known viruses (but none of my files got infected).

What should I do in such a case? Should I do anything at all?

malware

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    If you get a message that says something like: 

    ----------- SCAN SUMMARY -----------
Known viruses: 4746163
Engine version: 0.99
Scanned directories: 30
Scanned files: 135
Infected files: 0
Data scanned: 23.82 MB
Data read: 21.28 MB (ratio 1.12:1)
Time: 9.010 sec (0 m 9 s)

    ...there is nothing to worry about. The Known viruses are what the clamscan program checks to find if there are any infected files that match any of its known malware signatures.

    The message that you have to worry about is if there are any Threats Found, in which case I usually delete all the infected files if they are not system files. If ClamAV finds an infected file, you can either delete or quarantine it. See How to quarantine or delete infected files with ClamAV?.

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