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 don’t think we disagree at all? Mitigations like containers and jails are a far more appropriate tactic than antivirus. If this comment is with respect to my claim that Linux is not amazing at isolation by default, I am referring to the fact that applications have access to the full filesystem by default with the permissions of the user that they run under (which is scary as hell on plain desktop Linux), and additional mitigations like containers, jails, mandatory access controls, or even just daemon users are necessary to keep things more isolated. I think we’re just on the same page, sorry if it was unclear! I don’t think running ClamAV or any antivirus is particularly valuable, but I guess in theory a tool like that could help detect issues… but eh.