ClamAV: The top 5 misconceptions | Hacker News Reader

ClamAV: The top 5 misconceptions

blog.clamav.net

24 pointsjoelesler8 comments

I heard (from the official irc channel) that it's hard coded to never scan mp3 files. That was the main purpose I wanted it for, and I think it's wrong to hard code anything like that. I suppose it's a good lite partner to something like MSE, if it does now scan mp3s.

Well I heard that Steve Jobs puts subliminal messages in MP3s on iTunes to make you buy Big Macs because of a conspiracy by an international group of ......

You can set an ignore list (at least in the clamwin gui) by default a lot of data files (images, mp3s, avi etc) are set to ignore since they shouldn't be executed anyway unless your player is buggy

Thats somewhat silly as mp3's can be attack vectors, though I don't know if this is a problem in the wild.

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Security/GMs-OnStar-Ford-Sync-MP3-B...

I tend to run clam-av on file servers and mail gateways for the obvious reasons. I like the software, it works quite well. I'm going to have to look into the mp3 block though, this just seems like a bad idea.

I've used clam-av as a mail scanner (combined with postfix on freebsd 5.?-8.2) and on my mac desktop and it's very effective. I can't see any reason to not use it.

I've always heard ClamAV on Windows is dog slow. Anyone have any numbers?

It's not fast - but you can tune what/when it scans

Just did a test, C drive with 40Gb of Windows + program installs, a default settings initial full scan on a reasonably good machine.

----------- SCAN SUMMARY -----------

Known viruses: 925205 Engine version: 0.97 Scanned directories: 17693 Scanned files: 99960 Infected files: 0

Data scanned: 15352.83 MB Data read: 15506.05 MB (ratio 0.99:1) Time: 2863.965 sec (47 m 43 s)

Recommend taking a look at Immunet, it's for Windows, and has ClamAV built in.

Thanks. How about real time scan? Is it noticeably slower than the proprietary competition?

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