One of the AVG components that is probably least understood and
causes most confusion is LinkScanner. What does it do? Does it
scan webpages, compare URLs against some blacklist, ask the
cloud, or what? Actually it partially does all of these things,
but the most important piece is the first one. As you may know,
there are currently around 30,000 new viruses and other malware
hitting antivirus researchers’ labs each and every day. And most
of them spread via the web. The web is really the primary
‘attack vector’ – or distribution medium – for modern malware.
But for all these viruses, there are just a few hundred ways for
them to attack your computer – infecting your system without you
knowing it – either by misusing some bug in the operating system
or by using some tricks to persuade you to install the malware
(you can read about some of the most interesting tricks in Roger
Thompson’s blog). This is the aspect of malware detection that
LinkScanner is based on. It scans web page content as that
content is del