An antivirus program, the principle of which is based on scanning files, boot sectors of disks and RAM

An antivirus program, the principle of which is based on scanning files, boot sectors of disks and RAM in search of known and new viruses.

This program is called an antivirus scanner, which uses a signature and non-signature (heuristic) principle to scan for viruses. Signature is a search for viruses based on a previously known unique entry (signature) specific to a particular virus or virus family. The heuristic algorithm is used to search for unknown viruses based on general information about them and typical behavior in the infected system. As a rule, the scanner should scan files as deeply as possible, so it scans archives, packed executable files, etc., which puts a heavy load on the CPU and RAM during the scan.