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Clam AntiVirus cares about security. Dangerous operations in clamscan
(such as extracting, temporary file creation, unlink() operations) are
executed with clamav privileges. But there are no programs
without bugs. This is a young project and everything is possible. In some
places it uses the snprintf() function, some older systems (C
libraries) however the buffer length in this function isn't checked. This
example shows, that you should check your system first. Never set SUID/SGID
bits on Clam AntiVirus executables. If the SUID bit is set and
clamscan is owned by root, every file on the system may be modified
with the -log option. Normal users may use clamscan to scan
their files, other files shouldn't interest them. Clam AntiVirus Daemon
was written with security in mind - it doesn't allow external unpackers
(uses only libclamav unarchivers) and contains some additional protections.
Tomasz Kojm
2003-06-21