Multi-engine anti-virus scanners are a great help when dealing with suspicious files as you are able to leverage the malware detection capabilities of multiple antivirus engines with most up-to-date definitions from a single interface.
VirusTotal has been one of the most well-known such free service offering scanning of suspicious files and URLs with
42 anti-virus engines helping users reveal viruses, worms, trojans and other kinds of malicious content.
One of the most needed feature to make efficient use of multi-av scanning services is an browser helper utility which would enable users to scan URL's and files right from their web-browsers before visiting the suspicious link, thankfully
VirusTotal team has realized this and a Firefox web-browser addon
VTZilla is now available enabling users to right-click any suspicious link and launch a
VirusTotal URL Scan and even pre-scan a file before downloading from the default "Firefox Download Save" dialog-box.
Using
VTZilla to scan a link will only present you with the
URL scan report and you must click "
View downloaded file analysis" link to make
VirusTotal actually download and scan the file via their multi-engine antivirus scanner.
