Which of these is a drawback in using McAfee heuristic scanning?

Question

Options

• Aheuristic scanning cannot detect new malware with an unknown signature
• Bheuristic scanning requires a separate license key
• Cheuristic scanning increases the probability of false positives
• Dheuristic scanning increases the probability of false negatives

• A
  7% (2)
• C
  90% (27)
• D
  3% (1)

Explanation

Heuristic scanning analyzes code behavior and structure to detect suspicious patterns rather than matching known signatures - and because it's making educated guesses, it flags legitimate programs as threats more often than signature-based scanning does, making false positives the primary drawback (C).

Why the distractors are wrong:

• A is backwards - detecting new malware without known signatures is actually heuristics' main advantage over traditional signature scanning.
• B is fabricated - no such separate license requirement exists for heuristic scanning as a feature.
• D is the opposite of reality - heuristics casts a wider net, so it produces more false positives (incorrectly flagging safe files), not more false negatives (missing real threats).

Memory tip: Think of heuristics as a "suspicious by association" approach - it errs on the side of caution, so it over-flags. More caution = more false alarms = more false positives.

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