Emulating virus-like behaviour?

Question

I'm looking for a way to emulate virus-like behaviour for testing exclusions in anti-virus software. Can anyone recommend some behaviour that I can put together in a quick script which would trigger a typical realtime anti-virus scanner?

Answer 1

Are you looking for something like the Eicar test file?

If you want to hand-code virus-like behaviour, I can tell you that I've had trouble with anti-virus applications and the LowLevelKeyboardProc() and SetWindowsHookEx() functions. If the anti-virus application uses heuristics, it usually warns about keylogger-like actions.