The Inq is wrong

Posted Oct 24, 2006 4:39 UTC (Tue) by gdt (subscriber, #6284)
In reply to: Dakuzo doesn't work 100% by arjan
Parent article: Critical Linux security API is still a kludge (Inquirer)

SAMBA and NFS need a way of checking stuff before getting/sending it via the network. This may be able to use the previous thing, but maybe not.

Samba already has the Virtual File System API that can be used for virus scanning (and multilevel storage and other neat stuff). See samba-vscan for an implementation of a virus scanner which uses VFS.

Other applications which handle data on behalf of Windows systems have similar APIs. Sendmail's milter springs to mind. Milter is now in Postfix too, so we are seeking a common API emerge between the various mail transfer agents.

The Inq's complaint is that a API vital to virus scanning files before they are seen by a Window's host is missing. But since Samba, sendmail and other software which passed data to Windows systems have such APIs, what's the beef?

The article is a vendor whinge to a naive journalist dressed up with a page-hit-seeking headline.