System Processes

File Threat Ranking

The File Threat Rank is a unique way to classify the security risk of a file. Instead of judging a file from a pure black and white perspective (harmful / not harmful) files are classified in one of five categories.

Security companies determine if a file is harmful by searching for certain characteristics. For example, a filename, using some code or a compressor. This qualification is far from ideal.
For example, this gives a lot of false positives. If you are a software designer, and make the unfortunate choice to name file after a pre-existing virus then many virus scanners block this file.

Furthermore, the opinion whether a file is harmful or not is not always black or white. For example, for a long time, ad-ware was not considered malware because the user gave permission to install the software.
In the File Threat Ranking Agics collect all opinions from all recourses and then classifies the file into five categories.

The File Threat Rank is determined by;

Behavior in the system

Think on how the program behaves in your computer. Does it connects to the Internet? And if so, what sites? Does it change your internet start page? Does it change the system files? Etc. ..

Virus scan results

All files are scanned with different virus scans.

User feedback

From our web page all user can provide us with feedback. All feedback is collected and processed in a score. This includes feedback from Agics

Statistical information.

Files are compared to similar files. For example, there are 10 versions of a file known to us. Then we can detect a trend. Differences in size or naming can increase the FTR score.

Heuristic scanning information.

The programming code in files is checked for known viral code.

Existing white and black listings.

Agics already has the files for you compared to existing online black and white listings. The results are also incorporated into the score.

And more ...

This list is not complete. The File Threat Ranking score is constantly being improved. We also re-determine the score of all files regularly.