Kaspersky debuts Linux antivirus in the U.S.

news.com ^ | 2005-08-01 | Dawn Kawamoto

[N3WBI3]

Kaspersky Lab is expanding further into the American market with the U.S. debut of its antivirus software for Linux and Unix e-mail servers, file servers and workstations.

Moscow-based Kaspersky announced Monday that it has launched the corporate products in the United States. It has sold them in Europe for the past six years.

"Linux products are much more prevalent in Europe. But as Linux comes more and more online in the United States, there is a greater need for protection against malicious code," said Randy Drawas, a Kaspersky Lab spokesman. Treasure hunt sees Net gain Web video set to get flashy? Big storage on the cheap Ups and downs of consumer broadband Previous Next

Developers of the Linux kernel also see the need for greater security and earlier this year formed a security mailing list to keep each other apprised of flaws.

Kaspersky Anti-Virus version 5.5 is designed to protect e-mail servers, file servers and workstations running on Linux, Free BSD and Open BSD operating systems, the security company said. The upgraded version features real-time scanning technology called Kavmonitor that aims to identify and quarantine suspicious objects.

Version 5.5 includes improvements to its installation and removal procedures, Kaspersky said. A built-in Web interface enables IT administrators to maintain statistics on malicious software getting into their networks.

The software, which has begun shipping in the United States, sells for $26 per single workstation; $190 per file server; and $19.34 per mailbox license for orders between 10 to 25 mailboxes.

[N3WBI3]

OSS PING

If you are interested in a new OSS ping list please mail me

[ShadowAce]

[Paul C. Jesup]

I use Kaspersky Anti-Virus for Windows and it is a good anti-virus program, better than Norton, is has prevented viruses from loading onto my computer on more than one occasion.

[newzjunkey]

Freep-Geeks BUMP!

[Knitebane]

I run ClamAV on my mailservers. It's free (both gratis and libre) and works great at keeping Windows viruses from infecting the Windows users that get mail through my machines.

[zeugma]

I'm a bit unclear on the purpose of this software. Scanning email servers for windows viruses makes sense, but I'm not aware of any Linux viruses in the wild? I've got a couple of processes that check my systems for R00tkits, but I've never actually seen the need to scan for viruses.

I used to use tripwire, but it is too much trouble to use on a laptop or single-user workstation. (Highly recommended for production servers though)

I've made a poor-mans tripwire out of a couple of batch files. I md5sum a series of critical files and dump the output to a text file, then compare the output against a known good copy. If I apply updates, it is a simple matter of copying the 2nd copy of sums over the original to keep down the false-positives.

[N3WBI3]

I'm a bit unclear on the purpose of this software. Scanning email servers for windows viruses makes sense

And Samba Servers

but I'm not aware of any Linux viruses in the wild?

There are a few (I think I can count them on one hand), slapper got out there..