The Dr.WEB antivirus program can be installed either directly on Kernun or on any other machine connected via the network. The administrator of Kernun can choose either of two ways to transport files between Kernun and Dr.WEB:

The IP address and the port the antivirus program listens on are specified in the section antivirus on the system level of Kernun's configuration, as shown in Figure 6.51, “Configuration of the connection to the antivirus program” (we suppose Dr.WEB listens on localhost's port 3000). It is possible to limit the size (max-checked-size) of files scanned by the antivirus program. In the sample configuration, it is 1 MB. Larger files are not scanned and the antivirus module immediately reports the result as SKIPPED.

Figure 6.51. Configuration of the connection to the antivirus program

We will reference the DRWEB section in proxies that will use the antivirus program.

There are five possible results of a check of content by the antivirus:

The antivirus program can be used for online scanning of the content transferred via ftp-proxy, http-proxy, imap4-proxy, pop3-proxy and smtp-proxy. There is a slight difference between mail-processing proxies (imap4-proxy, pop3-proxy and smtp-proxy) and the other two (http-proxy and ftp-proxy). In the latter case, a special functionality is implemented that prevents clients from reaching a timeout while very long files are being scanned. The client is fed with chunks of the file at specified intervals until the scanning of the file is completed.

Document scanning for the HTTP and FTP proxies is configured in their doc-acl. The antivirus item specifies the name of the antivirus section to be used. The interval, chunk and limit items can be used optionally to specify that if scanning takes more than a certain time (5 seconds in the example), a chunk of the (as yet unscanned) file of a certain size (up to 2,000 bytes) is to be sent to the client at a certain interval (5 seconds). By default, only documents for which the antivirus returns the result free are passed by the proxy. The doc-acl.accept-antivirus-status item can be used to specify additional result codes, for which the checked data are to be passed, in addition to free.

Figure 6.52. Use of antivirus in the FTP and HTTP proxies

We will describe two variants of smtp-proxy configuration, differing in the way they handle infected mail. In this section, we show the case when infected mail is discarded, i.e. not sent to the recipient(s), but stored in quarantine.

In smtp-proxy, the item use-antivirus is used to define antivirus. Infected mail is detected in the mail-acl sections. One of them, a mail-acl accepting all e-mails (MAILOK), already exists in the Kernun configuration. We will create more to process messages with various antivirus scan results (see Figure 6.53, “Discarding infected messages in the SMTP proxy”). When smtp-proxy processes mail, the first matching ACL is used. We must therefore place new mail-acl sections before the existing MAILOK.

Figure 6.53. Discarding infected messages in the SMTP proxy

The first added mail-acl, VIRUS, discards infected mail and puts it in quarantine. Its only entry condition is virus-status. It is matched if the virus-status of the message is found (i.e., it contains a document that is infected by a virus). We define three actions: discard the message (i.e., the sender is not returned an error), deny it (the message is not sent to the addressee) and store the e-mail in quarantine.

The quarantine directory must be defined (the quarantine item in the smtp-proxy section) and created in the file system (e.g., /usr/local/kernun/root/var/quarantine, keeping in mind the smtp-proxy runs in chroot), and writable by kernun-user. For more information about ways of handling mail stored in quarantine, see quarc.sh(1).

There are two more mail-acl sections. AV-ERROR reports a transient error to the client if the the antivirus is unable to check the message. The client can retry sending the mail later. AV-UNKNOWN discards and quarantines the message if the antivirus does not scan it or if the proxy cannot understand the antivirus' reply.

Contrary to the previous example, this section describes a way to prevent infected mail from being discarded. This example refers to smtp-proxy SMTP-2, which is marked hidden in the sample file^[35].

This time, smtp-proxy removes the infected documents from the message and delivers the e-mail to the addressee, sending a BCC copy to a special (administrator's) e-mail address. Moreover, the subject is changed to make it obvious that a virus was removed from the message. smtp-proxy also stores infected mail in quarantine. The configuration is depicted in Figure 6.54, “Replacing infected documents in the SMTP proxy”

Figure 6.54. Replacing infected documents in the SMTP proxy

The removal of infected document is ensured by creating a special doc-acl DOC-INFECTED section that matches the infected documents. We place it in front of the existing doc-acl DOCOK in order to match before the more generic doc-acl DOCOK. The entry condition virus-status found limits the acl scope to the infected documents (documents marked by the antivirus program as containing a virus). We add the action item replace so that the matched (and therefore infected) document is replaced by the given file. The administrator must explicitly create this file if it does not exist. Because the proxy is configured to run in chroot environment, the file must be stored in the particular subdirectory of the directory specified as chroot-dir (in this case, /usr/local/kernun/root/etc/shared/error_documents/).

The special behavior for infected e-mails (i.e., the messages that contain an infected document) is defined in mail-acl VIRUS. The entry condition virus-status found limits the acl scope to infected e-mails. The accept item specifies that the e-mail should be delivered to the addressee. We specify that the message is to be stored in the quarantine, that a BCC copy be sent to a special e-mail address (the copy-to item) and that the subject be prefixed with a specified text (the prefix-subject item).

Like in SMTP, there is an additional mail-acl AV-ERROR that returns a transient error to the client if the mail cannot be checked by the antivirus. Finally, doc-acl REPLACE-AV-UNKNOWN replaces documents that are skipped by the antivirus.

In this section, we show the POP3 and the IMAP4 proxies configured to replace infected documents. See the Figure 6.55, “Replacing infected documents in the POP3 proxy” and Figure 6.56, “Replacing infected documents in the IMAP4 proxy”

Figure 6.55. Replacing infected documents in the POP3 proxy

Figure 6.56. Replacing infected documents in the IMAP4 proxy

First, we instruct Kernun to scan the documents transferred through the proxy with the antivirus by specifying the item use-antivirus. The item is specified directly in command-acl for the POP3 proxy, whereas for IMAP4 proxy, it is specified separately for the download and for the upload case.

In the second-level acl (mail-acl MAILOK), we specify that all e-mails should be accepted. In the third-level acl, we specify that we want to replace infected (doc-acl REPLACE-INFECTED) and unscanned (doc-acl REPLACE-AV-UNKNOWN) documents, and to accept all other documents (DOCOK)^[36].

The ClamAV antivirus configuration^[37] is very similar to that of Dr.WEB. The only difference is that clamav-file is used instead of drweb-file and clamav-net instead of drweb-net.

Unlike Dr.WEB or ClamAV, the NOD32 antivirus configuration does not support connections via TCP sockets, but only via UNIX sockets. NOD32 must therefore be installed on the same machine as Kernun.