[CentOS] Antivirus for CentOS? (yuck!)

Thu Jan 22 20:04:44 UTC 2009
Stephen John Smoogen <smooge at gmail.com>

On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 12:42 PM, David G. Miller <dave at davenjudy.org> wrote:
> Amos Shapira <amos.shapira at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi All,
>>
>> Yes, I know, it's really really embarrassing to have to ask but I'm
>> being pushed to the wall with PCI DSS Compliance procedure
>> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_DSS) and have to either justify why
>> we don't need to install an anti-virus or find an anti-virus to run on
>> our CentOS 5 servers.
>>
>> Whatever I do - it needs to be convincing enough to make the PCI
>> compliance guy tick the box.
>>
>> So:
>>
>> 1. Has anyone here gone though such a procedure and got good arguments
>> against the need for anti-virus?
>> 2. Alternatively - what linux anti-virus (oh, the shame of typing this
>> word combination :() do you use which doesn't affect our systems
>> performance too much.
>>
>> The reviewed servers run both Internet-facing web applications and
>> internal systems, mostly using proprietary protocol for internal
>> communications. They are being administrated remotely via IPSec VPN
>> (and possibly in the future also OpenVPN).
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> --Amos
> After reading all of the other replies (including the ones that pointed
> out that the PCI DSS requirement had changed the terminology from
> "virus" to "malware"), why not claim you are meeting the requirement by
> doing something useful like running chkrootkit or rkhunter on a regular
> basis?  That way you would be scanning the systems for the only malware
> known to actually pose a threat to a Linux box.  It may be a low
> probability of infection (as others have pointed out) but should satisfy
> the auditor and hopefully will just be a low cost exercise in futility
> as long as reasonable security policies are followed.

Any tool will require the need to have a risk assessment against it.
What is the liklihood of it finding malware? How much is updated and
how does it compare to other tools. These will be questions that will
need to be available for auditors to know you did your due-diligence
on selecting a tool.

-- 
Stephen J Smoogen. -- BSD/GNU/Linux
How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed
in a naughty world. = Shakespeare. "The Merchant of Venice"