Looks like it. i got this in one of my Linux Pipeline newsletter e-mails. No timetables though. Do they also intend to charge for def updates or will they leave the clamav side free for home use?
This would make things very interesting indeed.
Editor's Note: Root Down
Here we are again, settling into one of the slowest weeks, during one of the slowest months of the year. Here in San Francisco, of course, the heat isn't a problem, although you might wander off a cliff in the fog swirling outside my window this morning.
There are apparently other things to worry about besides the weather: I found a recent news item, about the growing use of rootkits to foil AV software and hide malware payloads, interesting enough to include here this week.
The rootkit article includes comments from a Moscow-based Kapersky Labs specialist. As luck would have it, I spoke last week with the president of Kapersky's U.S. operation, as well as another one of the company's senior malware experts. It was an interesting conversation. and I'm hoping to post a few notes from it later this week.
One of the key points of our talk concerned the fact that today's black hats aren't in the game for love or prestige; they're in it for the money. According to Kapersky, that means better organization, more sophisticated tools and technology, and a more careful choice of targets. As the growing use of rootkits suggests, it also means that a successful attack is one you don't notice for days or even weeks.
So far, all of this apparently hasn't changed the fact that such attacks overwhelmingly target Windows systems, both in relative and absolute terms. Given the increasingly prominent role Linux servers and open-source software play in areas such as enterprise databases, however, it's easy to see how the honeymoon could soon be over for Linux sysadmins who can't or won't properly secure their systems.
When it comes to security matters, I have no patience with FUD or virus-hype; in the case of Kapersky Labs, however, I trust and respect the company and its employees. They don't make a living from consumer market fear-mongering: Until recently, the company didn't brand its own AV product at all, instead licensing its technology for OEM use. Kapersky also has a good reputation with IT security professionals and with the open-source community -- and unlike many of its competitors, the company hasn't allowed ClamAV to run circles around its own products.
That last point, by the way, came up during another recent talk with the CEO of Astaro, a company that started out building secure Linux distros and now makes Linux-based security appliances. Astaro typically uses open-source software components in its appliances, with the exception of a proprietary Kapersky anti-virus engine -- mostly because, as CEO Jan Hichert told me, there simply wasn't an adequate open-source AV engine on the market.
That is no longer the case, according to Hichert: Over the past year, ClamAV has evolved into what he described as a "powerful" and "exciting" open-souce security product. As a result, Hichert said Astaro plans to add ClamAV alongside Kapersky, giving the company two anti-virus scanners in its security appliances.
I have been working some with ClamAV myself over the past few weeks, and I can second Hichert's opinion: ClamAV is quickly turning into one of the world's most powerful, promising, and rapidly improving open-souce products. It's about time the commercial anti-malware market got a kick in the pants -- and you'll know ClamAV is really getting to them when the inevitable smear campaign begins.
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