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The EICAR Anti-Virus test file is 68 bytes long, and it will cause all Anti-Virus software to trigger a virus alert. Of course, this EICAR file is not a virus, it’s just an industry-standard test file. EICARgen is an interesting tool, and a handy way to test your antivirus software, but just be careful what you do with it. EICAR test files are completely harmless, but if you email someone a copy of Eicar.zip, and it raises an alert, they won’t necessarily realize that. If you must share EICAR files, make sure the recipient fully understands what you’re doing, before you actually do it.The EICAR Anti-Virus test file is great to test your Anti-Virus software, but it’s not easy to handle, because your Anti-Virus software keeps deleting it.

EICARgen is a Windows console application. Start it without arguments, and it does nothing. Start it with argument “write”, and it will create eicar.com in the working directory and then exit. Add a filename as argument, and it will create the EICAR test file with the name you specified.

Replace argument “write” with “zip” to write a zip file that contains the EICAR test file, “pdf” to write a pdf file that embeds the EICAR test file, and “xls” to write a xls file that embeds the EICAR test file.