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List:       clamav-devel
Subject:    [Clamav-devel] Virus DB Metadata
From:       Robert Hogan <robert () roberthogan ! net>
Date:       2006-07-25 21:20:08
Message-ID: 200607252220.08477.robert () roberthogan ! net
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Hi there,

There's quite a lot of useful metadata available in the virus-db list. It 
would be nice to make this available in some way, even through the existing 
update infrastructure.

Before you gag on your cornflakes, the idea would not be to make the metadata 
available in sync with actual updates. It could be collated later at 
intervals.

It would be possible to use freshclam to fetch this metadata db by adding a 
command-line switch. The data could be managed and stored by freshclam in the 
usual way. This would circumvent the bandwidth overhead of making it 
available by default and would also bring the management of 
signature-addition history under the control of the clamav project itself.

Here are the pros and cons as I see them:

Pros:

* Metadata managed and distributed through clamav infrastructure (instead of 
gmane).
* Optional downloading means only clients (e.g. frontends) who want it will 
fetch it.

Cons:
* Will require maintenance on a fairly regular basis.
* Increased bandwidth utilization, however minimal.
* Could be argued that a website is preferable, though this would make it 
harder for the likes of mailscanners, and event frontends, to avail of the 
metadata.

Thoughts?

Thanks,
Robert



-- 

KlamAV - An Anti-Virus Manager for KDE - http://www.klamav.net
TorK   - A Tor Controller For KDE      - http://tork.sf.net
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