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.
Not at all. You leave a ssh port open, you don’t necessarily get a virus. Try it. Set up a raspberry pi, install ssh and leave the port open in your firewall. It is much less risky than exposing rdp (the most comparable windows protocol) on windows for instance.
It is a security risk, but absolutely not comparable of installing pdf.exe. Not even in the same league of risk.
As said, try it now and tell me how it goes.
There is a lot of misinformation around security on Linux
Glad you asked, I run a ssh honeypot and get multiple connections adding ssh keys, trying to run lockr, downloading shit every day.
2023-09-16T09:09:48+0000 [SSHChannel session (1) on SSHService b’ssh-connection’ on HoneyPotSSHTransport,14737,61.222.241.108] Command found: echo ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAABJQAAAQEArDp4cun2lhr4KUhBGE7VvAcwdli2a8dbnrTOrbMz1+5O73fcBOx8NVbUT0bUanUV9tJ2/9p7+vD0EpZ3Tz/+0kX34uAx1RV/75GVOmNx+9EuWOnvNoaJe0QXxziIg9eLBHpgLMuakb5+BgTFB+rKJAw9u9FSTDengvS8hX1kNFS4Mjux0hJOK8rvcEmPecjdySYMb66nylAKGwCEE6WEQHmd1mUPgHwGQ0hWCwsQk13yCGPK5w6hYp5zYkFnvlC8hGmd4Ww+u97k6pfTGTUbJk14ujvcD9iUKQTTWYYjIIu5PmUux5bsZ0R4WFwdIe6+i6rBLAsPKgAySVKPRK+oRw== mdrfckr >> .ssh/authorized_keys
Does the attack succeed? Never happened to me. You see bot trying, but really never seen succeeding irl. How is it configured?
Do you have also a rdp honeypot by chance? Do you see different rates of attack? Honestly curious.
I don’t have any windows licenses around, otherwise, it would have been an interesting test
It’s configured to allow requests from connections using common default passwords. If it wasn’t a honeypot the requests would succeed. I don’t currently run an rdp honeypot but I did a few years back, iirc the rates were about the same with rdp being a little bit less. Which as I say, comes down to configuration and usage. If you misconfigure Linux you will get malware, same as Windows.
Also, antivirus is the wrong idea there. What you’d want is an intrusion detection and/or integrity checking system.
Running a honey pot for SSH and sharing logs only proves that people try to attack you, it does not really tell if SSH as such is vulnerable or not. It is a honey pot, people gaining access if the whole point.
Having a locked down but exposed SSH access is something else.
You’re missing my point, a virus doesn’t have to infiltrate a completely secure system. It can come through you accidentally leaving your ssh insecure or any other service.
