The Virustotal online virus scanning service is one of the services that I use on a regular basis. Whenever I find a great looking software in a “not so great” location, I use the service to check the software out before I execute it on my system. This is for instance the case when software authors host their files on file hosting sites, and not on their own web space.
The old Virustotal had a file size limit of 20 Megabyte which worked fine for most executables and setups, but not for all. If you encountered a single file that exceeded the 20 Megabyte limit, you could not use the service to scan it at all. The service had other issues that users encountered every now and then, like large queues or pages that were not loading properly.
The developers have recently updated the service website and virus scanning service that improves Virustotal considerably.
When you open the service’s homepage you will notice two of the changes right away.
The first is a new professional feel and look, the second that Virustotal now accepts file sizes of up to 32 Megabytes. That’s a reasonable 60% increase that should resolve the majority of “file size to big” issues that users encountered previously on the site.
Once you upload a file you will notice that the reporting interface has changed as well.
The url scanner is now supporting a total of 19 different scan engines that includes a mix of well known (Google Safebrowsing, Opera, Phishtank) and lesser known services. Some url scanning services provide additional information that are now also displayed in the scan results.
Virustotal has moved to Google’s App Engine Service which, according to the developers, speeds up the analysis significantly. Developers of third party apps now benefit from faster response times thanks to a public API update.
Virustotal has improved significantly thanks to the recent update. Especially the maximum file size increase needs to be mentioned in this regard.
Have you used the new version yet? If so, what is your impression of the service? (via Dottech)
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Metascan, A Virus Total Alternative To Scan Files Online About the Author:Martin Brinkmann is a journalist from Germany who founded Ghacks Technology News Back in 2005. He is passionate about all things tech and knows the Internet and computers like the back of his hand. You can follow Martin on Facebook or Twitter.Author: Martin Brinkmann, Sunday January 15, 2012 -
Tags:online virus scan, virustotal