How do companies such as Mcaffee or Norton find the new viruses that come out?

And how do you report a problem on your pc due to a virus or other that isn't listed in their program?

How do companies such as Mcaffee or Norton find the new viruses that come out?ktm

There is also the concept of a honey monkey. it is an unprotected computer on the internet that has some scripts running that cause the computer to go to dangerous sites that have had known exploits in the past so that they are even more likely to get attacked.

Norton would probably load up a bunch of the current protection onto a honeypot and let the honeymonkey go the bad parts of the internet to see what NEW stuff is about to attack.

Then this virtual machine is compared to the original pre-infection machine to see what the damage is -the some reverse engineering ensues to determine the attack method and the possible innoculation strategies.

How do companies such as Mcaffee or Norton find the new viruses that come out?nortan

They're the ones writing the virus. Just kidding. I think some of the advanced searches for virus can detect some of them even though they don't know what they are and if you find one you can submit it to Mcafee and Norton. I'm sure a lot of them are submitted by computer users.
About 90% of viruses created are sent straight to Norton. Most of the people who develop these kinds of things just want the pride of having created something that outsmarts everyone. Few people actually want to do all that much damage.

Norton then reverse engineers the virus to find how to fix it.
chatrooms, forums, and emails from users
They also use what are called ''Honeypots''. These are unprotected, un-updated, un-patched computers that connect to the Internet, with the idea to intentionaly become infected.

Most are infected within minutes if not seconds.
They all do, but some are quicker with certain types than others.

Check the ratings at http://www.cnet.com before buying Antivirus updates the next time.