RE: Virus protection by unix (was Re: To the Debian Project... )
On 21-Sep-99 David Wright wrote:
> Quoting Keith G. Murphy (keithmur@mindspring.com):
>> Art Lemasters wrote:
>> > BTW, I recently worked a contract for a corporation that uses
>> > nothing but NT servers and workstations. The machines were rebooted
>> > every two or three days, and complete images were installed to them
>> > once a week or more. Granted, though, the employees there were
>> > actually
>> > allowed to send and receive e-mail to their workstations via the
>> > Internet with no UNIX server to protect them!
>> >
>> Semi-serious question:
>>
>> How does a UNIX server protect them against viruses (I assume that's
>> what you mean)? Do they die in the arid environment of the server?
>> ;-)
>
> I think unix servers are generally virus-neutral. Most of the products
> that claim to scan emails, for example, at gateways seem to be built
> for NT and Netware. Perhaps this is one reason why so much anti-virus
> scanning is left to the end-user, which makes it much more expensive
> as well as hit-and-miss. (I for one have no idea how to scan a floppy/
> email/downloaded file with a virus scanner.)
I suggest having a look at AMaViS - A Mail Virus Scanner
See: http://satan.oih.rwth-aachen.de/AMaViS/amavis.html
This is a (quite complex) script which allows you to apply your favourite
ported-to-Linux virus scanner to email (it includes code for extracting
attachments which may be uuencoded, base64-encoded, gzipped, tarred, etc,
and subjecting each attachment to the scanner).
You will also need to download a good virus scanner from a suitable
source. I use the McAfee "uvscan"; the docs to AMaViS suggest other
choices as well.
You can also use this software to scan directories containing Word
documents etc, if you keep such stuff.
I also set up my mailer (XFMail) so that I can pipe an email to
the scanner if it has an attachment which contains MS files (in fact
I don't otherwise bother with routine virus scanning of email).
Hope this helps,
Ted.
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E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding@nessie.mcc.ac.uk>
Date: 21-Sep-99 Time: 16:02:03
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