How can I detect a new file download

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Hey All,

I am writing a anti-malware package in c# and one of the features I would like to add to the application is that as soon as a download begins then the application would detect it and compare it to known corrupt files. Is this even possible?

What I have tried:

I have tried to have it run as a service but the application doesn't react to downloads.

Posted 27-Aug-16 5:28am

Retro617

Updated 3-Sep-16 13:07pm

OriginalGriff

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Philippe Mori 27-Aug-16 13:57pm

Windows already do something similar by warning us when we download uncommon EXE files.

In my opinion, C# is not adequate for that purpose. Any background process that would do some scanning should probably written in native code to have minimal impact on the supervised system.

Also it is somewhat futile to do that... Either you need quite a big infrastucture and popularity to make useful or it would be almost useless as there are millions of possible downloads.

Simple comparison is probably not adequate as software is often updated so it would be hard to keep up to date.

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David_Wimbley · Answer 1 · 2016-09-03T13:07:00

You can use the file system watcher class in C# to detect new file downloads.

FileSystemWatcher Class (System.IO)[^]

With the following events, you can do anything you need when a file is altered/updated/deleted.

C#

watcher.Changed += new FileSystemEventHandler(OnChanged);
watcher.Created += new FileSystemEventHandler(OnChanged);
watcher.Deleted += new FileSystemEventHandler(OnChanged);
watcher.Renamed += new RenamedEventHandler(OnRenamed);

Keep in mind this would have to be implemented as a windows service to continuously monitor a directory.

The link i provided provides samples for what you need to do to make FileSystemWatcher class work.