Scan a Link For Malware Using VirusTotal To do this, you’ll need to locate a file’s download link. That’s the direct link to download the file, not just the address of the file’s download page.
Firefox for mac any good. The recent outbreak of the Flashback trojan (Apple released an update and fix, get it!) has brought a lot of attention to potential viruses and trojans hitting the Mac platform.Most of what you’ll read is overblown fear mongering hype, and practically all Mac malware has come through third party utilities and applications.
For example, if you want to scan a.exe file, you’ll need the direct link to the.exe file. If you want to scan a.doc file, you’ll need the direct link to the.doc file. You can spot this by mousing over the link and looking at the address in your browser.
Right-click the link and select “Copy link address” in Chrome, “Copy Link Location” in Firefox, or “Copy link” in Edge. Next, head to in your web browser. This tool has been owned by Google since 2012. Click the “URL” tab on the page and then paste the link you copied into the box.
Click the search button or press Enter to scan the file. VirusTotal will download the file you specified to its servers and scan it with a large number of different antivirus engines. If other people have recently scanned the file, VirusTotal will show you the recent scan results.
If you see “No engines detected this URL”, that means that none of VirusTotal’s antivirus engines said there was a problem with the file. The “0/65” means the file was detected as malicious by 0 of VirusTotal’s 65 antivirus engines. This means it should be clean. Of course, it’s possible that new and exotic malware may not be detected by any antivirus programs yet, so it’s always a good idea to be careful and only get software from sources you trust. (In fact, not two days after publishing this article, our example file—CCleaner 5.33—. A perfect example of how VirusTotal, while useful, isn’t perfect!) If one of the antivirus engines detects a problem with a file, you’ll see a note saying that a number of antivirus engines detected the URL as a problem.
In some cases, the opinion may be near unanimous. In other cases, only a few antivirus tools may have a problem with the file. This is often a false positive, though in certain circumstances it could be that some antivirus tools have spotted new malware before others. You can scroll down to see which antivirus tools had a problem with the file, view more details about the file, and see community comments about whether the URL is safe or not. (In some cases, for example, it may just be flagged for including bundled crapware, which is easily bypassable.) If you end up scanning a file download page instead of the downloaded file itself, you’ll see a “Downloaded file” link on the VirusTotal page.