Comments on: Best Linux Antivirus – Kaspersky, Clam, & Norton

By: Irwan Sitanggang

Irwan Sitanggang — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 12:20:07 +0000

@Pieter, quote: viruses cannot activate themselves
(Windows based) Some viruses can run itself by autorun file. To keep a rescue disk from one or two vendor is better than slow down your system with antivirus installed

By: Wayne

Wayne — Sat, 15 May 2010 18:02:48 +0000

I wouldn’t want to fly on an airline that landed successfully 88.6 percent of the time.

By: peter dodds

peter dodds — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 18:38:58 +0000

HI, I USED CLAM AV ON UBUNTU9.10 IT SAID THAT THE ENCRPYTED ZIP PACKAGES HAD VIRUSES IN THEM THESE PACKAGES WERE OFFICIAL UPDATES FOR UBUNTU. COULD THEIRE LINUX SERVER BE CONTAMINATED WITH VIRUSES? I ALL SO HAVE A FIREWALL INSTALLED ON UBUNTU 9.10

By: Replying

Replying — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 21:17:22 +0000

> Have you ever had a virus that snuck in without requiring you to take any action?
Yea, I had. It was on Windows with Internet Explorer, too many sites opened, and some of them were bad enough to put viruses on the computer. After this I always have resident shield enabled, use Firefox and visit only more-or-less trusted sites.
I understand that it means that I went to malicious websites. But… A skillful virus writer could have put virus even on a completely trusted site (say, become an advertiser on Yahoo! mail, use Flash and exploit one of its vulnerabilities).

Even New York Times had an attacker jumping from advertisement recently. The attacker was silly enough to use social engineering: it’s workable with some people, but it led to him being noticed and removed from this position.

If there was a hole in the browser, a skillful attacker could have easily put virus on the computer.

Say, create a virus for hiding in images, edit images in Wikipedia, and everybody looking at them has a risk of being infected. Fortunately, there are no such holes in image readers now so this vector became impossible. And the vandal would soon be blocked.

Position of an advertiser on a well-known site is still the most comfortable. People will hardly connect a virus with a trusted site, if the attacker is skillful enough and has a zero-day virus.

By: Replying

Replying — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 21:09:56 +0000

Norton catches 100% of KNOWN viruses and 88.6% of CUSTOM/UNKNOWN viruses. It’s completely fair to say that “Norton also performed well”. However, I’ll stick with ClamAV as Kaspersky is costly and ClamAV is free and fast.

However, even New York Times had an attacker jumping from advertisement recently.

If there was a hole in the browser, a skillful attacker could have easily put virus on the computer.

By: Peter

Peter — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 14:14:33 +0000

@Pieter: You may be right that the scanners detect only Windows viruses, I’ve never actually checked if they tackle non-win ones as well. But even if that’s the case – THIS is the point of them.
I’m running different flavours of Linux and Windows on my machines and all of them have anti-virus soft installed.
Why?
Because the last thing I want is to pass infected files (ie: just by forwarding an email). This is extremely important in business cases.

And generally:
I’m surprised that there is no mention of NOD32. I’m using it [read: my clients use it] on Linux mail and file servers in mixed OS environments (+ on Linux and Windows workstations) and I know I can sleep easily.

It would be good to get similar comparison with NOD32 included.

By: AlternaGeek Technology Podcast Network » AlternaGeek Episode 10: Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

Thu, 16 Aug 2007 16:37:01 +0000

[...] Cybernet: Best Linux Antivirus – Kaspersky, Clam, & Norton [...]

By: Pieter

Pieter — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 08:00:04 +0000

Correct me if I’m wrong but although these scanners are made for Linux, they only detect Windows viruses. Therefore such a scanner would be unnecessary as these viruses can’t do any harm in a Linux environment. Unless you use a dual-boot system and regularly access your Linux partitions on Windows and vice versa.

If you install system updates as soon as they’re available (most Linux distributions come with an updater system), the chances of you getting a Linux virus is very small.

I for one have never used a virus scanner on Linux, and I have never had to do with a virus yet. And remember: viruses cannot activate themselves. The user needs to go to a malicious website, open a certain attachment or execute a certain file first in order for the virus to start doing its job. If you’re smart enough, you don’t need a virus scanner, even on Windows. Yeah, you should do it (at least on Windows) to be on the safe side but think about it: have you ever had a virus that snuck in without requiring you to take any action? Probably not. These antivirus products are a rip-off, unless you’re using a free product of course.

By: Daryl

Daryl — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 21:22:22 +0000

I was surprised that there were so many readily available viruses for Linux, I’d always thought the only reason to run AV on a linux box was if it was a mail server for windows machines. So I downloaded the test set to my trusty linux machine and… They Were All Windows Viruses!… Linux won’t do much with those exe files.

If you want the viruses, or an excel spreadsheet listing them by name, they can be found here: [virus.untangle.com]

Daryl

By: Mohan

Mohan — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 19:33:47 +0000

Sweet article, and very informative. Thanks for the info, although currently I don’t use and antivirus on my laptop (Ubuntu 7.04) I should look into AVG or ClamAV.