TL;DR - What are you running as a means of “antivirus” on Linux servers?
I have a few small Debian 12 servers running my services and would like to enhance my security posture. Some services are exposed to the internet and I’ve done quite a few things to protect the services and the hosts. When it comes to “antivirus”, I was looking at ClamAV as it seemed to be the most recommended. However, when I read the documentation, it stated that the recommended RAM was at least 2-4 gigs. Some of my servers have more power than other but some do not meet this requirement. The lower powered hosts are rpi3s and some Lenovo tinys.
When I searched for alternatives, I came across rkhunter and chrootkit, but they seem to no longer be maintained as their latest release was several years ago.
If possible, I’d like to run the same software across all my servers for simplicity and uniformity.
If you have a similar setup, what are you running? Any other recommendations?
P.S. if you are of the mindset that Linux doesn’t need this kind of protection then fine, that’s your belief, not mine. So please just skip this post.
To be honest, antivirus software is just not really a security tool. If you’re at the point where malicious software is running on your server you’ve already lost and it’s hard to know what extent the damage will be. Having proper isolation is much more important (something which, tbh, Linux isn’t quite as great at as we’d like to think, at least not with additional effort… mobile operating systems seem to take the isolation of applications a lot more seriously). You could maybe argue that the anti virus software is useful for monitoring, but I’d rather have some stronger guarantees that my application isn’t going to take my lunch money and private keys than a notice a day later that something sketchy is on my machine… I won’t flat out say a virus scanner is completely useless, because of course you can contrive of scenarios where one could be helpful, but they’re kind of dubious.
Also yeah, ClamAV afaik isn’t really used like a typical windows antivirus. It’s mostly used on mail servers to scan email attachments. It’s not necessarily even looking for “Linux viruses”.
Okay sure same thing as Windows. If you aren’t reckless with the things you install and run then you are likely fine BUT there’s always a chance. All it takes is one slip up. Same logic as having a lock in the door knob and a deadbolt. By your logic (and many others), the lock on the door knob is sufficient and that may be okay with you BUT I’m gonna put a deadbolt on too just in case.
We can argue about this all day long. You will have valid points and so will I.
But would you put a deadbolt on your garage door? Or on your fridge door? IMO, arguing by analogy here just obfuscates the points – your servers aren’t physical doorways with locks, and comparing them just confuses the issue.
Can you explain what added security an antivirus package would offer for a Linux server? I haven’t done much with Linux administration, mostly just using Docker images for stuff at work.
I’m not a super Linux expert or anything, but I do grok tech, and I’m curious about this topic.
