T3 Commandline Scanner

T3 Commandline Scanner is a straightforward piece of software that can be used to check the computer for malware using the IKARUS antivirus engine. It can be easily operated from the console environment by users experienced with command-line utilities.

Before proceeding any further, you should know that T3 Commandline Scanner does not offer real-time protection against malware like IKARUS anti.virus. Although it can find and remove already infected files, it cannot keep you safe from future infections so it can only be used as a second line of defense.

Installing this program is not required since you can just unzip the downloaded archive and call T3 Commandline Scanner's process from a Command Prompt window to perform a scan.

However, it cannot work without the IKARUS virus definitions, which can be separately installed and copied to the same location as the command-line tool (the definitions are autodetected). Also, it's best to run the command-line scanner with administrative rights to avoid errors related to file access permissions.

Having to download another file might seem like a tedious task to some users, but this ensures that the virus removal utility is updated with the latest virus definitions, making it capable of identifying the newest malware threats.

The syntax is t3scan [options] <path>. It's not mandatory to set options but you have to indicate the full path to the drive or directory you wish to scan. Unlike typical antivirus applications wrapped in a graphical interface, it's not possible to run quick or full scans with T3 Commandline Scanner.

As far as options are concerned, you can ask the tool to read input files from a newline-separated file (-filelist or -f file_name), create a log file with the scanning activity (-logfile or -l file_name), and limit the file size in megabytes (-maxfilesize or -m number, default number is 64MB).

By default, T3 Commandline Scanner doesn't act upon identified malware but only runs scans. You can exit simulation mode with -n. It's also possible to exclude subdirectories from scans (-nosubdirs or -d), prevent the tool from scanning archive contents (-noarchives or -na), and stop recursive file scans within archives after a specified number of seconds (-rtimeout seconds).

It can summarize archives to report only the final archive result (-sa), stop scanning a single file after a specified number of seconds if it takes too long (-timeout seconds), increase the output level (-verbose or -v), and hide the adware and spyware signatures used to detect threats (-noaware). If the IKARUS virus definitions are in a different location than the CLI scanner, you can point it out with -vdbpath or -vp path.

Scanning operations may take a while. However, T3 Commandline Scanner remained light on system resources usage in our tests. Thanks to its straightforward commands, it can be used a second line of defense against malware for users who trust the IKARUS virus definitions.