Clam AntiVirus (ClamAV) is a GPL (GNU General Public License) anti-virus toolkit for UNIX type operating systems. The main purpose of this software is the integration with mail servers and automatic attachment scanning of incoming email messages. The package provides a flexible and scalable multi-threaded daemon, and a tool for automatic updating virus signatures via internet. Note: Always run a solid, updated AV package on your machine. As robust as our solution is, aren't two heads better than one? Here are some more cool facts from the ClamAV story:Tomasz Kojm created the e-mail virus scanner ClamAV in 2002 as a supplement to the now-defunct OpenAntiVirus project. "OpenAntiVirus was probably the first open source attempt for anti-virus," Kojm says. "It was written in Java, and to be honest, I didn't like it—Java is not that light, and it was causing big overloads on our servers." The application's first big boost came when it was published on FreshMeat. After that, Kojm says, more and more people got involved in the project, and the core team now consists of 16 developers distributed worldwide. ClamAV has more than 120 officially published mirrors in 39 countries, and it's still early days yet—the project hasn't yet reached version 1.0, though Kojm says that's likely to come in the next year or so. "ClamAV is still a young project in the anti-virus field," he says. "Most of the commercial products have a history of ten years or longer."
Kojm says there's a lot to be said for the open source model, particularly for a solution like anti-virus. "Everyone can look into it and check if it contains any possible back doors or things like that," he says. "Also, many people audit open source software, so we are able to react very quickly to new bugs." And any anti-virus solution, Kojm notes, requires constant updating—which the open source model helps to support. "It's not like developing an image viewer," he says. "You need to update the system, you need to update the virus detection techniques, you need to constantly develop new methods for fighting viruses." ClamAV also boasts a number of active mailing lists, which Kojm says keep most users from having to turn to commercial support for help. "The mailing list is sufficient in most cases, especially because ClamAV is generally very easy to install," he says. Responding to outbreaksFerris Research analyst Richi Jennings says the open source model seems to work well for ClamAV. "If you look at the independent tests that are done by people like AV-Test.org, for example, the well-known names in anti-virus actually don't do a tremendously good job of being responsive to new virus outbreaks," he says. When a new virus appears, Jenning says, the major providers often aren't the fastest responders. "The big names who you might think have a lot of resources behind them actually do a mediocre job, generally speaking," he says. "And the people who are doing a good job tend to be smaller names, less well known." AV-Test.org's Andreas Marx agrees that ClamAV's strength lies in its speedy response to new outbreaks. He notes, though, that it has some problems with false positives and detection rates. "It only has an 85 percent detection rate in the case of WildList viruses and a 35 percent detection rate for Zoo malware, while commercial scanners usually have 100 percent WildList and 95 percent + Zoo detection rates," Marx says. Strength in numbersYankee Group Senior Analyst Andrew Jaquith says ClamAV does extremely well in competition with commercial solutions—but he advises against deploying any single anti-virus solution on its own. "We think that doubling up coverage on your AV is a good idea," he says. "And Clam could certainly be an example of a second engine to provide that coverage." Jaquith notes that many companies have expressed an impressive amount of confidence in ClamAV. "Mac OS X Server, for instance, bundles ClamAV, so they think it's good enough," he says. "Barracuda bundles ClamAV, and a variant of IBM's AIX has it as an option as well—so it's enough for many uses." Jaquith says it all comes down to the management of the ClamAV project itself. "From what I've been able to tell, it seems like it's a pretty good example of how open source ought to be working—a cohesive development organization, responsive and passionate users, and flexibility," he says. "I think that's what you want, and it seems like they're doing it." For more information, click to Bsleek's Knowledge Base, F.A.Q. and Articles section |
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