Advice needed on anti-virus for linux

im looking to get good reliable av for my pop os build just to be safe an secure an saw this one called ClamAV is it reliable an safe or is ther better free or paid im good for a cost up to 120 especially if it can cover 2 pc at once.

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I think clamav is the most popular linux anti-virus… it might be the only one too.

You might get broader protection with clamav if you install the clamav-unofficial-sigs package too. You will also get a lot of emails about outdated signatures. You can turn off the outdated databases to get stop the notifications.

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ok thanks an were an how do i get an download
the clamav-unofficial-sigs package

apt install clamav-unofficial-sigs or whatever package manager that you use? I’m not familiar with pop!OS, but it is ubuntu/debian based I believe.

https://packages.ubuntu.com/search?keywords=clamav-unofficial-sigs

pop!OS?

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Best way to avoid viruses, is to use only the distro package manager, and Occasionally trusted websites for Debs and stuff.

It’s not like Windows, where you have to get all your software from random places.

But, it is not immune to viruses. most are quite loudly talked about, and the vulnerability patched, so best stay up to date.

Clam AV might be useful if you are downloading windows apps to install on a windows system later?

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I remember a loong time ago a story about malware being delivered via Microsoft’s website due to something something something I’m sure Russians were mentioned. The specifics don’t really matter. Anyway, it was a big deal because people weren’t getting it from some random place, but somewhere they ought to have been able to trust.

Anyway, conceivably if someone were to get some malware onto, say, the PPA for OBS-studio, or whatever other favourite piece of software you have that you like to keep update, it’s not outside the realm of possibility that that could be bad for you despite you not actually doing anything wrong.

I do find it funny that I still get emails from MalwareBytes, and they are posting more about the increasing malware situation on Linux, but when you look they still don’t have a product to do anything about that. A lot of the attitude still seems to be that the danger is Linux servers getting infected with Windows malware, and pushing that malware to Windows clients where it can actually do harm.

thanks i got it installed but one question how do i set it to auto scan at a certian time

The whole point of an antivirus in Linux is for scanning files that are served to other OS (Windows and Mac). For example, if you have an SMB share in your NAS for multiple users, if one user uploads the infected file, the NAS should be able to remove it before it is served into the network.

These days, if a file is suspicious, you upload it to virustotal.com where it is sandboxed and opened and scanned by pretty much all antivirus vendors. For free.

EDIT: I believe malware only exists on Linux if APTs put it there. And it is sort of hard to fight them by definition.

There are also malicious packages especially if you use something like AURs or PPAs.
There are also malicious library packages when you are coding when getting something from NPM and Whatever Python equivalent is.

A cron job might be the best bet

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I’ll be honest I’m truly lost in this idea of a anti-virus for a loonix machine…

wouldn’t it be better to use something to analyse packets from time to time, like wireshark or something?

see if something that shouldn’t be calling home is

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The whole point of an anti-malware/virus system would be to automate that kind of detection so that you do not have to worry about it yourself.

Regarding file analysis, the benefit relative to Virustotal and similar sites would be in privacy, since scanning could in theory take place locally and leak nothing back to the vendor about what files you view/use/create/execute. However in practice, many antivirus systems have cloud-powered features that probably leak all kinds of data back to the vendor if not disabled.

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