ClamXav Follow-up: Test with Live Malware

I took a look at the freeware ClamXav anti-virus software for the Mac (based on the Open Source ClamAV project) last month.

ClamXav: Free Anti-Virus for Your Mac - Help Protect Your PC Friends

I commented then that: I didn't have any Windows XP malware samples to test against (I used to keep some on my Linux box to test ClamAV there but stopped doing that a few years ago).. Live malware is the sort of thing I leave lying around on a hard drive. But, after a bit of hunting I found my collection.

As you can see from the first couple of test results, I have a variety of old malware in Microsoft EXE (executable), SCR (screensaver executable), ZIP (compressed archive), and other file types that hid the malware. I also have some uninfected files and files that generate false positives in the collection.

I think ClamXav missed a couple of infected files. But, this, unfortunately, is not unusual even when working with an old batch of malware that should be identifiable at 100% by now.

As I said in my previous blog item about ClamXav, this exercise is more about protecting our Windows using friends and co-workers. All of the test malware I have targets that platform and not OS X.