* Recognizes and removes viruses, trojans, rootkits, spyware and other malware.
* Revolutionary innovation in scanning technique to distinguish between malicious and safe software without signatures.
* Short scan time - searches the system within a few minutes.
* No extra system load.
* Impossible to make false positives on important systems files thanks to "profiling" and whitelisting.
* Multi-vendor identification of malware in our real-time "Scan Cloud".
* Automatically restores common system alterations made by malicious software.
* Creates a check point in System Restore before removing malicious software.
* Removes resistant threats using native NT boot-time deleter.
* Removes references to malicious software (like shortcuts and registry entries).
* Free malware scan.
* Free online support in English, German and Dutch.
The Hitman Pro 3 executable can be downloaded and run straight from a USB Flash Drive, CD/DVD, local or network attached hard drive and will quickly reveal the presence of any malware.
It will scan your PC in a few minutes and detect files that are potentially malware using a Behavioral Scan.
The actual identification of these potential malware files is then done on the Hitman Pro servers - the "Scan Cloud".
To understand how Hitman Pro 3 works we first need to describe a few fundamental characteristics of malicious software and your Windows PC.
Like everything else, malicious software always has a purpose. The malware writer only wants one thing: money. The traditional virus that cripples or destroys your PC is now quite rare. To make money the virus needs to be run and stay resident on the PC. This way the malicious software can steal your personal data, show pop-ups, or install fake software programs. The software can even turn your PC into a zombie as part of a botnet, using your PC to send spam or be part of a cyber attack. Of course, all this is going on without you noticing anything. To keep doing this, the malicious software needs to start automatically and protect itself from being removed by security software.
On a single Windows PC there are thousands of files with a limited number of these files being "executables" and "associated data files", which have file extensions like EXE, DLL, SYS, etc. They belong to for example a word processor, a spreadsheet program or a photo editing program.
To work properly, the malicious program must be an executable file.
Hitman Pro 3 looks for executables like drivers and other automatically starting software programs. These are active in memory, communicate with the internet and potentially try to make themselves invisible. From an average of 400,000 files on your PC typically only 2000 are interesting enough for Hitman Pro 3 to classify. Hitman tries to determine:
* where a file comes from
* how it got on your PC
* which publisher created it
* what purpose it has
* whether it can be uninstalled appropriately
* if it is visible for the user and trough Windows API's
* if it's communicating with unreliable computers on the internet
* if it's compressed or encrypted
* if it has anomalies commonly found in malicious software
* what people say about the file on security related websites
These are just a few of the details that Hitman Pro 3 collects, understands and associates. This method is what we call the Behavioral Scan.
History
Hitman Pro versions 1 and 2 were immensely popular in 2006-2008 with millions of users.
The software installed anti-malware software from various vendors to detect and remove malicious software. These software programs were automatically managed on the PC of the end user by Hitman Pro version 1 and 2.
This approach had some disadvantages: A very long scan process, high system load, and errors made by the used anti-spyware software could cause an unstable system.
All these issues are solved in Hitman Pro 3, that was re-developed completely from scratch, using our own technologies.
Hitman Pro 3 uses as many characteristics of safe and malicious software as possible. After classifying only a handful remain interesting enough for further investigation. Each file is fingerprinted and sent to our Scan Cloud. This cloud determines if a file is safe, unsafe or unknown.
Unknown files on your PC are physically sent to the Scan Cloud where the files are scanned, in just seconds, by trusted anti-malware software from our trusted partners.
Purpose
Hitman Pro 3 does not leave a program running in the background that continuously checks incoming e-mail and downloaded files for malware. Therefore you need to scan your PC regularly to ensure your PC is not infected.
Hitman Pro 3 can be used in combination with any other security suite. Scanning your PC for malware with Hitman Pro 3 will always be free so if you already have a security suite on your PC, it is an ideal program to make sure your security suite has not missed anything.
Behavioral Scan
The Behavioral Scan in Hitman Pro 3 does not need to monitor your system constantly to discover suspicious behavior. Most behavioral blocking programs need to monitor continuously. Hitman Pro 3 uses the knowledge from multiple anti-malware partners to identify the files on your system, which makes it exceptionally usable for non-technical computer users, who cannot answer incoherent questions about for example new system services or registry entries. In addition, Hitman Pro 3 knows upfront which files are not interesting and which belong to the operating system. This is done by checking the (valid) digital signatures on executable files and a white list containing signatures of known safe files. Hitman Pro 3 has signatures of all important files from Windows 2000 to Windows 7 (RC). After a quick check, these files are automatically detected as safe.
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