Clam AntiVirus (ClamAV) is a free, cross-platform antivirus software tool-kit able to detect many types of malicious software, including viruses. One of its main uses is on mail servers as a server-side email virus scanner. The application was developed for Unix and has third party versions available for AIX, BSD, HP-UX, Linux, Mac OS X, OpenVMS, OSF (Tru64) and Solaris. As of version 0.97.5 ClamAV builds and runs on Microsoft Windows.[2][3] Both ClamAV and its updates are made available free of charge.
Sourcefire, a maker of intrusion detection products and the owner of Snort, announced on 17 August 2007 that it had acquired the trademarks and copyrights to ClamAV from five key developers.[4]
Features
ClamAV includes a number of utilities: a command-line scanner, automatic database updater and a scalable multi-threaded daemon, running on an anti-virus engine from a shared library.[2]
The application also features a Milter interface for sendmail and on-demand scanning. It has support for Zip, RAR, Tar, Gzip, Bzip2, OLE2, Cabinet, CHM, BinHex, SIS formats, most mail file formats, ELF executables and Portable Executable (PE) files compressed with UPX, FSG, Petite, NsPack, wwpack32, MEW, Upack and obfuscated with SUE, Y0da Cryptor. It also supports many document formats, including Microsoft Office, HTML, Rich Text Format (RTF) and Portable Document Format (PDF).[2]
The ClamAV virus database is updated several times each day and as of 30 October 2011 contained 1,063,024 virus signatures with the daily update Virus DB number at 13867.[2][5]
Effectiveness
ClamAV is currently tested daily in comparative tests against other antivirus products on Shadowserver. In 2011, Shadowserver tested over 25 million samples against ClamAV and numerous other antivirus products. Out of the 25 million samples tested, ClamAV scored 76.60% ranking 12 out of 19, a higher rating than some much more established competitors.[6]
ClamAV was included in comparative tests against other antivirus products. In the 2008 AV-Test it rated: on-demand: very poor, false positives: poor, on-access: poor, response time: very good, rootkits: very poor.[7]
In a Shadowserver six-month test between June and December 2011, ClamAV detected over 75.45% of all viruses tested, putting it in fourth place behind AhnLab, Avira, BitDefender and Avast. AhnLab, the top antivirus, detected 80.28% [8]
Platforms
Linux, BSD
ClamAV is available for Linux and BSD-based operating systems.[2] In most cases it is available through the distribution's repositories for installation.
On Linux servers ClamAV can be run in daemon mode, servicing requests to scan files sent from other processes. These can include mail exchange programs, files on Samba shares, or packets of data passing through a proxy server (IPCop, for example, has an add-on called Copfilter which scans incoming packets for malicious data).
On Linux and BSD desktops ClamAV provides on-demand scanning of individual files, directories or the whole PC.[2]
Mac OS X
Apple Mac OS X Server has included ClamAV since version 10.4. It is used within the operating system's email service. A graphical user interface is available in the form of ClamXav.[9] Additionally, Fink, Homebrew and MacPorts have ported ClamAV to the platform too.
Another program which uses the ClamAV engine, on Mac OS X, is Counteragent. Working alongside the Eudora Internet Mail Server program, Counteragent scans emails for viruses using ClamAV and also optionally provides spam filtering through SpamAssassin.
OpenVMS
ClamAV for OpenVMS is available for DEC Alpha and Itanium platforms. The build process is simple and provides basic functionality, including: library, clamscan utility, clamd daemon and freshclam for update.[10]
Windows
ClamAV for Windows is now a part of the Immunet client produced by Sourcefire.
eComStation
ClamAV for eComStation (OS/2) is available from OS/2 Power Wiki. "The main purpose of this software is the integration with mail servers (attachment scanning). The package provides a flexible and scalable multi-threaded daemon, a command line scanner, and a tool for automatic updating via Internet. The programs are based on a shared library distributed with the Clam AntiVirus package, which you can use with your own software. Most importantly, the virus database is kept up to date."[10]
Graphical interfaces
Since ClamAV does not include a graphical user interface (GUI) but instead is run from the command line, a number of third-party developers have written GUIs for the application for various platforms and uses.
These include:
ClamTk 4.30 running on
Ubuntu 11.04
- Linux
- ClamTk using gtk2-perl; project is named for the Tk libraries that were used when it began[11][12]
- KlamAV for KDE[13]
- wbmclamav is a webmin module to manage Clam AntiVirus[14]
- Mac OS X
- ClamXav is a freeware port which includes a graphical user interfaces and has a "sentry" service which can watch for changes or new files in many cases. There is also an update and scanning scheduler through a cron job facilitated by the graphical interface. ClamXav can detect malware specific to Mac OS X, Unix, or Windows, but malware definitions for Mac OS X are updated less often, with sometimes up to a year between updates. However, the ClamXav application and the ClamAV engine, are updated regularly.[15]
- Tiger Cache Cleaner is shareware software which installs and presents a graphic interface for using ClamAV to scan for viruses, and provides other unrelated functions.
- Microsoft Windows
ClamWin
ClamWin is a graphical user interface front end for ClamAV for Microsoft Windows built by ClamWin Pty Ltd. Features include on-demand (user started) scanning, automatic updates, scan scheduling, context menu integration to Explorer, and an add-in for Microsoft Outlook. To provide on-access scanning (scan when a file is read or written), additional software must be used. Examples are Clam Sentinel and Winpooch which are free software.
Plugins for Mozilla Firefox which use ClamWin to scan downloaded files are also available.[17][18] Several other extensions allow users to process downloaded files with any software and scan the files with ClamWin.[19][20][21][22]
Patent lawsuit
Barracuda Networks is being sued by Trend Micro as of 2008 for its distribution of ClamAV as part of a security package.[23] Trend Micro claims that Barracuda's utilization of ClamAV infringes on a software patent for filtering viruses on an Internet gateway. The free software community has responded in part by calling for a boycott against Trend Micro. The boycott has been endorsed by the Free Software Foundation.[24] Barracuda Networks counter-sued with IBM obtained patents in July 2008.[25]
See also
References
Further reading
External links
