No threats detected
All checks passed. This site appears legitimate — but always stay alert for phishing even on trusted domains.
Is eicar.org legit or a scam?
Official EICAR site hosting the well-known anti-malware test file, established 1991 as a German non-profit with clean reputation.
Analysis Summary
MT Intelligence
The page content directly matches the known EICAR organization, including its history, test-file downloads, and contact details that align with the registered German address. Business registration records confirm an active non-profit association at Obergasse 28A, 86943 Thaining, Germany, with no complaints or scam mentions located. A small number of antivirus engines flagged the domain, but this is expected because the site intentionally hosts the EICAR test file that security products are designed to detect. The hosting IP carries zero abuse reports and browser blocklists show no entries. Overall signals point to a legitimate, long-standing research organization rather than any fraudulent operation.
Website Preview
Automated page render — captured in a safe sandbox. What an ordinary visitor would see when loading the site. See full visual analysis →
Visual Screenshot Analysis
We capture a fresh screenshot of the live page and ask a vision model to look for scam visual patterns — fake trust badges, countdown timers, overlay pop-ups, and visual clones of legitimate brands.
Visual red flags detected in the screenshot
We could not capture a fully-rendered screenshot of this page; visual analysis is inconclusive.
What our vision model saw
1 signalScreenshot incomplete — site may be slow to render
Web Research Findings
Our live research agent queries scam-report databases, consumer-review sites, news coverage, and general web search for eicar.org, then cross-checks business-registration records and look-alike domain patterns. Everything below is pulled from what it actually found.
- Established in 1991 as the European Institute for Computer Anti-Virus Research (EICAR) non-profit (e.V.)
- Creator of the standard EICAR anti-malware test file (68-byte string) used globally for AV testing
- Official site hosts test file downloads at secure.eicar.org; referenced by Microsoft, Trend Micro, Kaspersky, Wikipedia
- Address listed: Obergasse 28A, 86943 Thaining, Germany
- No scam, fraud, or complaint reports found in searches for domain + scam/review/complaint/reddit
- One automated scanner (pcrisk.com) reports trust score 57/100 with 4/91 engines flagged
Registered association (e.V.) at Obergasse 28A, 86943 Thaining; non-profit
Our research confirmed the domain belongs to a registered German non-profit association (e.V.) active since 1991 at the listed address in Thaining. No scam reports, fraud mentions, or consumer complaints were found in any searched sources. The site is recognized as the official source of the EICAR anti-malware test file referenced by security vendors.
Antivirus Engines
Security Scans
Checked against the major public blocklists used by browsers and security tools — no hits.
Contact Verification
We fetched the page and looked for real-world contact details. Legitimate businesses almost always publish an email on their own domain, a phone number, and a postal address. Scam shops usually don't.
- No contact email found anywhere on the page.
- No postal address visible on the page.
- Phone number listed (+49 8194 99 84 99).
Domain & Encryption
Redirect Chain
- 1301http://eicar.org/
- 2301https://eicar.org/
- 3200https://www.eicar.org/cross-domain
Server Reputation
Still, stay alert
No major threat indicators — but a clean scan does not guarantee every page is safe, and phishing emails routinely spoof real domains.
- Double-check the exact URL in your address bar
Confirm you are actually on eicar.org and not a lookalike like e-icar.org.com or an IDN homoglyph.
- Use a password manager
Password managers only auto-fill on the exact domain they were saved for — they refuse to fill lookalike domains, which is the single best phishing defence.
- OpenDiscuss this site on the forum
If you have first-hand experience with this site — good or bad — share it with the MalwareTips community.
Trust History
Reputation Sources
How this domain rates across independent threat-intelligence and blocklist providers.
Referenced Domains
Outbound domains this page links to or loads resources from. Each links to its own security scan.
Safety FAQ
Common questions about this site, answered from the scan data on this page. These are auto-generated — not hand-written — so they always match the underlying report.
- Our automated security review found no threat indicators on eicar.org. The site appears legitimate based on the signals we checked, but always stay alert for phishing emails that spoof real domains.
- eicar.org passed our automated security checks with a trust score of 70/100. No antivirus engines or major blacklists flagged the site at the time of the last scan.
- Yes. eicar.org presents a valid TLSv1.3 certificate issued by Let's Encrypt · R12, expiring in 55 days. Note that SSL only encrypts the connection — it does not guarantee that the site itself is trustworthy.
- 4 out of 91 antivirus engines in our malware network flagged eicar.org as malicious or suspicious (2 outright malicious). Even one detection is a meaningful signal.
- No. eicar.org is not currently listed on the major browser blocklist feeds that modern browsers use.
- eicar.org resolves to an IP operated by manitu GmbH in DE (usage type: Content Delivery Network). Hosting location alone doesn't make a site good or bad, but unusual geography for a brand's claimed country is one of many signals we weigh.
- We cache results for 24 hours. Signed-in MalwareTips members can trigger a manual rescan at any time using the "Rescan" button on the report page, which re-runs every check from scratch and refreshes this page.
User reviews & comments(0)
Share your experience — "Lost $200 on a fake checkout" is more useful than "Scam". Your review helps others avoid traps.