Virus Scanning files online?

[Ruku]

Hi,

I have a server which will soon be hosting files from general user upload.

I am running debian, and things should be secured. I do not reallly worry about getting a virus, my concern is that general users could upload one and download plenty... resulting in complete madness!

So I was wondering if there was a service that runs online, on another server, who could scan on request the uploaded by the users and returning wheter there is a virus or not in the package contents before it's download release!

I've heard TrendMicro offers something similar, but only the personnal usage gets commented alot and I haven't heard of any business involved over it,

Does anybody have any comments on their service, knowledge of how it works or possibly other reliable online virus scanners in mind?

[CornedBee]

Look into ClamAV. It's an open source virus scanner. Not entirely sure how to access it from PHP, or if that's even possible. Google might help there.

Once you've got ClamAV running and can send it files from PHP, just send every uploade file through the scanner and reject it if the scanner complains.

Wait, you said different server. That complicates things ...

[Ruku]

yeah... TrendMicro is the only virus scanner I know that can scan files on another machine efficiently... though I think it requires an activeX applet for local files...

ClamAV looks good, and free , but it would be difficult to catch deleted infected files containing the virus... even on local machine (server),

which is why another server scanning the files would help a lot!

[CornedBee]

but it would be difficult to catch deleted infected files containing the virus

Huh?

[Ruku]

A deleted file scanned with a virus would automatically be deleted, no? how can I verify these events through my server?

[CornedBee]

You don't necessarily have to delete the file. You could quarantine it, i.e. move it to a different directory than the other uploaded files. This would allow you to review them afterwards. Though what you would want to do with them, I don't know.

[Ruku]

Whatever it does with the files is not quite important... the only thing that interests me is how I can catch the sign of an infected file through my server....