Make Your Own Fake Virus with Notepad

Every geek wants to pretend that they are a dangerous hacker with the ability to take down any PC, and after you read this article, you can do show off your skills with nothing more than Notepad.

Of course, we’re not making an actual virus—it’s a fake virus. In fact, it’s a test virus. But it’s still fun, and today’s article is sponsored by reader Erik, who wrote in and told us about it.

Create a Fake Virus with Notepad

What we’re actually doing is re-creating the same technique talked about on eicar.org’s test virus page, except we’ve got better screenshots.

Open up a Notepad window, paste in the following text, and then save it.

X5O!P%@AP[4\PZX54(P^)7CC)7}$EICAR-STANDARD-ANTIVIRUS-TEST-FILE!$H+H*

It should look exactly like this once you’ve pasted it…

And then you’ll almost instantly see a big fat warning that you’ve created a virus—as long as you’ve got anti-virus installed and working, of course. If you don’t see any warning, you should probably make sure your virus scanning software is properly enabled.

Your geek points will be wired to your WoW account, you dangerous hacker, you.