Usually, we only look for two things in an antivirus: that it detects all threats, and that it stays out of the way. It may seem contradictory at first, but it's the plain truth for any desktop user. However, there are environments where the antivirus needs to be a more direct and flexible tool, and ClamAV has tried to occupy that position for the last twenty years. Cisco's project has just reached version 1.0, with improvements and optimizations on several levels.
History tells us that the first version of the ClamAV engine debuted on May 8, 2002, thanks to the work of developer Tomasz Kojm. The original databases were stored on his school's servers, and the peak of popularity was so high that it caused a DoS. Five years later, ClamAV moved to Sourcefire, and in October 2013 it joined the ranks of Cisco, where it remains today.
That's 20 years of development and protection, especially in environments like email servers. In general tests, ClamAV has always lagged a few steps behind other similar solutions, but that can only improve with additional work, and so we arrive at the announcement of version 1.0. It is an LTS build, which includes a large number of optimizations and background fixes.
Download ClamAV 1.0 for Linux and Windows
Some of the highlights from the changelog of ClamAV 1.0 include support for decrypting XLS files based on OLE2 protected with the password by default, increases in the memory allocation limit, and restrictions on the recursion of PDF object extraction, but the list is much longer, and it is aimed at both developers and maintainers.
Logically, having reached version 1.0 does not mean that ClamAV has abandoned its idiosyncrasies. In other words, we are still dealing with a tool without an official graphical interface, which works through the system console and requires several adjustments before its first scan, including copying and editing two files (clamd.conf and freshclam.conf), and manually updating its databases.
If this path is not viable, the best alternative for Windows users is to download ClamWin. The project has not received updates in 18 months and its engine is certainly older, but the databases are the same. In the case of Linux, one can always experiment with ClamTk, which is in a similar situation, with the client's last update dating back to November 2021.
Official announcement: Click here
