Microsoft to kill popular Linux antivirus product (ComputerWorld) [LWN.net]

Microsoft to kill popular Linux antivirus product (ComputerWorld)

Posted Jun 13, 2003 19:00 UTC (Fri) by smoogen (subscriber, #97)
Parent article: Microsoft to kill popular Linux antivirus product (ComputerWorld)

I will say that this put a crimp on a big eval I was doing. The product looked like it was written directly for Linux versus some half baked hack that I have seen on others. The fact that it could run on Sendmail, Qmail, and Postfix and the licensing were cream on the top of the cake.

Rather pissed.. but oh well.

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Microsoft to kill popular Linux antivirus product (ComputerWorld)

Posted Jun 13, 2003 23:29 UTC (Fri) by penguinista (guest, #308) [Link] (2 responses)

Another "so, who cares? development..."

Lets see, I am searching for linux anti-virus alternatives to RAV now:

http://www.centralcommand.com/13062003.html(special offer for RAV refugees)
http://www.f-prot.com/download/
http://www.bitdefender.com/index.php
http://www.pandasoftware.com/com/linux/linux.asp
http://www.avp.ru/
http://www.openantivirus.org/
http://www.sophos.com/
[This from just doing some quick searches, sorry to those I left out]

Anyway, NOT running $MS software along with the growth of webmail clients will eliminate >90% of the problem.
Look for the above companies and many new ones to fill the void that RAV
has left (Symantec, are you listening?) Moving on...

Microsoft to kill popular Linux antivirus product (ComputerWorld)

Posted Jun 15, 2003 17:10 UTC (Sun) by cpm (guest, #3554) [Link]

Who cares?

I care.

We have been swearing by RAV for 2 years.
While all the *other* av vendors have been
strictly reactive, RAV has been putting out
updates hours if not days ahead everyone else.

After one of our consultants, (advocates of
a M$ partner av system) introduced Klez into
our sequel servers during an "update" visit, we were
up all night scubbing our systems down with the
RAV cleaner, while everyone else was rebuilding
from scratch. We lost NOTHING except a few binaries
thanks to RAV.

The RAV sendmail product has been FANTASTIC, the
file server av has been wonderful, everything they
did worked GREAT. On our recommendation, we probably
sold 3 or 4 hundred seats of their av desktop product.

This was a really bad move. RAV rocked, now it will
become just another M$ product.

RAV on linux was just one of the very many reasons why
Samba on linux was just simply better. RAV on sendmail
was just one of the very many reasons why sendmail
on linux let me sleep good when I wasn't at work.

I can't help but think that this move was predicated on
M$'s desire to undermine Linux every way it can. Killing
good Linux products by assimilation helps meet that
end.

Microsoft to kill popular Linux antivirus product (ComputerWorld)

Posted Jun 19, 2003 3:02 UTC (Thu) by lonely_bear (subscriber, #2726) [Link]

Actualy you left one out. Haven't had time to take a good look at it yet.
This one is GPLed, using the AV pattern file from OpenAntiVirus
http://clamav.elektrapro.com/

Microsoft to kill popular Linux antivirus product (ComputerWorld)

Posted Jun 14, 2003 10:45 UTC (Sat) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link] (3 responses)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but this product was configured so well with all those MTAs because it sits as the SMTP server (or rather: an smtp proxy).

Compare that to the recommended configuration of amavis, which is to use the filtering interfaces of postfix/sendmail/exim (no idea about qmail) and check the message while in the queue.

More pain to set-up, but then again, I don't have to trust a propriatary, closed-soruce program to be my SMTP server. Postfix does that much better, thank you.

Microsoft to kill popular Linux antivirus product (ComputerWorld)

Posted Jun 14, 2003 12:32 UTC (Sat) by Soruk (guest, #2722) [Link] (2 responses)

Before making my response, I must confess to being the developer of the software mentioned below. Which is why I'm not posting a link.

MailStripper uses the SMTP proxy route - it's an anti-spam filter but also does anti-virus (currently using F-Prot, if enabled). It's checked before your downstream MTA sees the message. So far not a single pathogen has got past it.

It gets the AV scanner to look at the message, and parses the report to determine whether the email should be quarantined or not. This architecture should allow it to be expanded to pretty much any AV offering that can be run on the command line and generate a report.

Currently only F-Prot is supported for AV scanning, but I hope to expand that...

I understand what you're saying about not wanting to trust closed source software (yet you're still having to trust it to AV scan your mail) but so far attempts to persuade the local supermarket to accept source code for groceries have proved fruitless :(

Microsoft to kill popular Linux antivirus product (ComputerWorld)

Posted Jun 14, 2003 13:20 UTC (Sat) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link]

What I mean is that the SMTP server is part of the the MTA. It's not just about spam/virii killing. What about the load incurd on my system? What about the paranoid design of qmail (which postfix tries to follow, rather well)?

BTW: amavis tries to use any possible scanner, including f-prot, and including clamav/openantiviros (actually there are a number of branches of amavis, and hence the "try").

Also, ease of installation is no excuse. I have seen linux distros integrate well components that were much more difficult to install (apache, anybody?).

MailStripper, etc.

Posted Jun 15, 2003 0:32 UTC (Sun) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]

This sounds like how MIMEDefang works, except MIMEDefang is GPL'd, and supports about a dozen virus scanners.