Shareaza

Hi everybody,

The recent move amongst file sharing clients is to implement antivirus protection. LimeWire did it for their PRO versions, and Vuze also does the same. Of course, it's basically the users responsibility to install an antivirus that will protect their system as a whole and not only downloaded files on a per file basis and that good free solutions are currently available, but an additional protection may still be useful.

Of course, the Shareaza team can't strike a deal with a professional antivirus editor, but if the user has ClamWin it should be possible to call clamscan.exe when a download is finished and check the file. There's an open source Firefox extension, namely Fireclam which does it, and it seems relatively simple. I would recommend installing that add-on and to test it for yourself to get an idea of what I have in mind (you may use Eicar's anti-virus test file.

ClamWin doesn't offer the best protection, far from it actually, but it doesn't require lots of resources, doesn't conflict with other antivirus applications since it doesn't have real time scan capabilities, but it's able to launch when the user logs in and to keep its virus database regularly updated. So although not perfect, this could still be an interesting solution to protect the users as much as we can while requiring little programming/translation efforts.

Lots of users have Avira AntiVir PE installed, too (It is one of the widely used free anti virus solutions and scores best in most free anti virus solution tests). It allows to scan a file with a command line command. Maybe Shareaza could automatically detect the presence of AntiVir and ask the user whether or not the command line necessary to scan files should be called automatically on file completion...

This will only give users a false sense of security. Not only that, but having multiple antivirus programs often causes conflicts(even without real-time scanning) and can cause damage to the system (such as ridiculously slow boot times) - undoubtedly some users will see that shareaza is compatible with clamwin and download it in addition to there existing antivirus, then blame shareaza because there computer broke. Most antivirus programs scan any incoming files automatically so adding this provides no extra protection, only a pretty dialog box.

If anything we should give users the option to run a command or batch file when a download is complete using the users existing antivirus software (as OD suggested), since this trick is possible with many antivirus programs besides clamwin (pretty much any AV with a "scan this file" option in the right-click menu).

Doesn't any AV worth having automatically scan downloads when Shareaza moves, renames, and hashes them after completion?

So that's why my AV has a separate "P2P Shield" to supplement the "File system shield"... Live and learn...

Well, it could be an option since ClamAV does only scan On-Demand. So other AV-scanners will not be hindered. But what about the detection rate?

BTW: maybe we could use an other virus scanning program, maybe McAfee Stinger?

The best way would probably be to do a copy/paste from the relevant Firefox code.

again, we can't just bundle an antivirus program with shareaza! regardless of real-time scanning, one antivirus program will conflict with the other since it is very likely that they will be scanning the same file simultaneously (crashing each other and causing system lockups). i have tried this before! one antivirus program will detect the other antivirus programs' virus signatures or quarantined files as viruses and tries to remove them, possibly causing damage (such as not booting) and making the situation worse. They can also cancel each other out and neither of them will scan properly, allowing viruses to get through.