Virus Scanning Protection

last updated on: April 20, 2022

Access Anywhere prevents the downloading and sharing of malicious files through a ‘scan on write’ approach. As files are uploaded they are scanned. If a virus is detected, the upload fails, and an error is returned immediately to the user or application.

The audit log (for add/update) captures successful and unsuccessful scans and uploads:

File solution-brief.pdf uploaded to My Cloud files/mybucket. Scanned with antivirus ClamAV 0.99.2/24143/

ClamAV is the officially supported virus scanner available for use with Access Anywhere. ClamAV is a high performance multi-threaded daemon supporting many file formats including file and archive unpacking.

In High Availability environments each appliance serving web traffic will be required to run a local ClamAV service. Files added outside of Access Anywhere, directly to the external storage and discovered through provider synchronization, are not scanned.

ClamAV must first be enabled and configured on each web node.

SSH to the appliance as user smeconfiguser, then become root

su -

Use systemctl to start and enable ClamAV (that is, will startup on boot):

# systemctl enable clamd@scan
# systemctl start clamd@scan

Next verify that it is running and enabled:

# systemctl status clamd@scan
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/clamd@scan.server; enabled;... 
Active: active (running)

The appliance configuration file can be found at:

/var/www/smestorage/public_html/config.inc.php

Verify that the settings below are configured as shown:

var $enableantivirus = 1;
var $clamavsocketpath = '/var/run/clamd.scan/clamd.sock';

The virus scanning of uploads is a configuration option for organizations. The option is available when added to the user package.

To make the ClamAV available as a configuration option for an organization tenant the feature must be added as an 'Extra option' in the User Package.

To make this change, login as the Appliance Administrator (appladmin). From the Main menu (the hamburger icon top right) select 'User Packages’. For the package you want to change select Edit (the pencil icon). Once you’ve selected 'ClamAV Antivirus Integration' choose Save.

An Organization Administrator can enable virus scanning for uploads under Organization > Policies > Security:

Once started the ClamAV service will generate log data.

To verify ClamAV has been running successfully check the last entries in the log:

$ tail /var/log/freshclam.log
...
Fri Feb 2 00:34:21 2018 -> SelfCheck: Database status OK

ClamAV configuration settings can be found at:

/etc/clamd.d/scan.conf

The Freshclam application updates the antivirus signature database. It is preinstalled on the appliance and by default is scheduled to run once an hour.

To verify Freshclam has been running successfully check the last entries in the log:

tail /var/log/freshclam.log

To verify the connection to the online database (and update definitions) run as root:

freshclam

By default virus definitions are updated once an hour (see /etc/crontab).

47  *  *   *    * root /usr/bin/freshclam --quiet

Freshclam can be configured through the file:

/var/www/smestorage/config/clamd/freshclam.conf

If the ClamAV service is not running when the user uploads a file the user may see the following message:

Socket operation failed: No such file or directory (SOCKET_ENOENT)

Verify scans are operational through the audit trail. The policy “Audit File add/update” must be enabled by an administrator under Policies > Security > Audit > Events.

File solution-brief.pdf uploaded to My Cloud files/mybucket. Scanned with antivirus ClamAV 0.99.2/24143/

For a positive match the log looks like:

EICAR-testfile.txt failed to upload to myprovider/mybucket/myfolder . Antivirus ClamAV detected Eicar-Test-Signature(44d88612fea8a8f36de82e1278abb02f:68) infection. ClamAV version ClamAV 0.99.2/24211/

For a test virus file see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EICAR_test_file.