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.
I also use ClamAV, but only in specific circumstances, such as when a Linux server will be hosting end-user files. Perhaps a SAMBA server with a file share, or a web server which accepts user uploads.
In those cases, I might want to have it monitor the relevant part of the disk, but I also need to make sure my web application won’t fall over when the file it just accepted is unceremoniously ripped away from it. You can test that out using the EICAR file as your payload.
On a jump box, I might also have it turned on for scanning user home directories, by including /home, and then excluding any home directories for applications and daemons which might not deal well with having their IOPS nuked or delayed.