Can any one suggest me some free open source anti virus

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I thought the point of *nix was that there are no viruses. If you're looking for a free, open source for Windows, it doesn't exist. There are plenty of limited "free" products for Windows, but none open source.

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The problem is, that you can easly spread viruses on Unix systems to Windows systems, for example on an Unix fileserver or mailserver.

Clamav (http://www.clamav.org) is a free antivirus toolkit for Unix. Source code is available, and it's posible to compile it on the most Unixes. Binaries are also available for Linux, AIX, HPUX, Solaris, *BSD, MacOS,...

It can used to include as normal filesystem scan, or also included into a mail server as online virus scan for mails.
The Clamav peoples also announces support for Windows on the next release.

The problem is, that you can easly spread viruses on Unix systems to Windows systems, for example on an Unix fileserver or mailserver.

I thought that due to the executable file structure difference, Unix programs could not run natively on Windows systems. Unless you're talking about Windows viruses on a Unix file/mailserver spreading to other Windows systems?

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The problem is, that you can easly spread viruses on Unix systems to Windows systems, for example on an Unix fileserver or mailserver.

I thought that due to the executable file structure difference, Unix programs could not run natively on Windows systems. Unless you're talking about Windows viruses on a Unix file/mailserver spreading to other Windows systems?

Yes, I meaned this excatly.

Thank you OzzFan and Dotsch for reply

I thought that due to the executable file structure difference, Unix programs could not run natively on Windows systems.

Indeed so. However, you can use cygwin or some sort of virtual box on the Windows system if you really want to do that.

What I guess you meant to say was that Windows programs including Windows malware cannot natively run on a *nix system. However, you can use the WINE environment on Linux to present the Windows API that can then be abused by Windows malware. Even then, any such malware cannot spread outside the WINE environment.

Unless you're talking about Windows viruses on a Unix file/mailserver spreading to other Windows systems?

Indeed so.

A very good trick that is often used is to employ a Linux system fileserver/mailserver to do all the virus scanning and firewalling to protect a Windows network from the rest of the world. Unfortunately, that still cannot offer any protection if users then use Internet Explorer to tunnel through the firewall...


After various 'incidents', I've come to the conclusion that you simply cannot protect an insecure system from the internet by relying on a firewall alone. Unfortunately, 'anti-virus' operates (if at all) some time after the fact...


The obvious 'free'/'open source' anti-virus that runs on a Linux system is ClamAV. Most of the virus/malware signatures are for Microsoft Windows ofcourse.

(Follow-up in the s@h-Politics forum?)

Regards,
Martin

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I wish that were true.

I have been looking at 7 trojans that infected my wine installation in Fedora 12

It would seem a expliot with the new kernels will allow your machine to get infected.

Clamav is what everyone suggests but I found Avira free to be much better