Linux to scan for virus?

[Psittac]

In theory, if I had a thumb drive that was in someone's possession that could easily have a M$ virus on it or some kind of loader or who knows what............ Could I load it up on a linux distro to scan for M$ viruses?

[Razor Blade]

are you asking for an anti-virus for Linux? I'm not really certain what the question is... I've heard good things for ClamAV if you are.

[Psittac]

23 minutes ago, Razor Blade said:

are you asking for an anti-virus for Linux? I'm not really certain what the question is... I've heard good things for ClamAV if you are.

My mom ordered a thumb drive off ebay full of templates for her sewing machine.  That just screams virus to me, so I was thinking if I installed linux onto an old laptop I could mount it in an OS that wouldn't autoload a virus then scan the thumb drive before opening it on a microsoft machine.

 

I honestly don't know much about this but I would like to learn more.  I've used Linux in the past so that's not an issue, but I'd like to learn more about security.

 

My main concern is the thumb drive loading something automatically when plugged in before the antivirus can check it out

[Razor Blade]

18 minutes ago, Psittac said:

My mom ordered a thumb drive off ebay full of templates for her sewing machine.  That just screams virus to me, so I was thinking if I installed linux onto an old laptop I could mount it in an OS that wouldn't autoload a virus then scan the thumb drive before opening it on a microsoft machine.

 

I honestly don't know much about this but I would like to learn more.  I've used Linux in the past so that's not an issue, but I'd like to learn more about security.

 

My main concern is the thumb drive loading something automatically when plugged in before the antivirus can check it out

Oh I see. You could load up Ubuntu then use "sudo apt-get install clamav" to get the ClamAV. Then use "sudo freshclam" to update to the latest definitions. Finally use "clamscan" (add folder and file to the end) to scan what you want (note that you may need to use sudo with clamscan if you are scanning anywhere in root)....that's about the limit of my knowledge on it as I'm still a linux noob...

[Koeshi]

My suggestion would be, take the drive and plug it into a Linux box.  I am guessing the templates will just be image files so take those and move them onto the Linux machine.  Then you can reformat the USB drive and put the images back on afterwards.

[Psittac]

1 minute ago, Koeshi said:

My suggestion would be, take the drive and plug it into a Linux box.  I am guessing the templates will just be image files so take those and move them onto the Linux machine.  Then you can reformat the USB drive and put the images back on afterwards.

thank you, that's exactly what I needed to know

[Koeshi]

Glad to help  though what @Razor Blade suggested isn't a bad idea in general if you want to check something for malware.  The reason I suggested my approach is because I think it fits your specific use case.

[Psittac]

5 minutes ago, Razor Blade said:

Oh I see. You could load up Ubuntu then use "sudo apt-get install clamav" to get the ClamAV. Then use "sudo freshclam" to update to the latest definitions. Finally use "clamscan" (add folder and file to the end) to scan what you want (note that you may need to use sudo with clamscan if you are scanning anywhere in root)....that's about the limit of my knowledge on it as I'm still a linux noob...

oh, I didn't notice your response.  Thank you that's also exactly what I needed to know.

 

So I guess my question is will a linux OS scan for M$ viruses? It sounds like that's the case

[Razor Blade]

2 minutes ago, Psittac said:

thank you, that's exactly what I needed to know

still wouldn't hurt to scan those files... a lot of viruses inject code into many different files. Just be cautious. If it were me, I would first scan the whole drive, load a windows VM in virtual box with the program she uses then open the templates to verify the file isn't corrupted, resave them (if possible), then load them back on another drive. After all that I would still scan the drive with malwarebytes and Avast or AVG on my main PC before accepting the files as safe. I tend to go overboard sometimes though.

[Razor Blade]

5 minutes ago, Psittac said:

oh, I didn't notice your response.  Thank you that's also exactly what I needed to know.

 

So I guess my question is will a linux OS scan for M$ viruses? It sounds like that's the case

AFAIK, yes ClamAV will scan for windows viruses as well

 

EDIT: Oh and make sure frikken autorun is disabled on her computer... That should be the first thing to do on any Windows PC.

Edited June 30, 2018 by Razor Blade

[Psittac]

Thanks for all the info, it'll help in this situation and I will learn more from it.  Appreciate it

[jde3]

ClamAV is ok.. but there are commercial antivirus as well. People use these generally for mail servers and file servers to protect windows systems. I think Bitdefender use to make a free (command line only) version for Linux. They were a LTT sponsor. That would be a good one to use.

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