ClamAv Outdated on Ubuntu Dapper

Lately I noticed that my ClamAv installation is having some issues. Observe:

# freshclam
ClamAV update process started at Fri Feb 16 16:14:54 2007
WARNING: Your ClamAV installation is OUTDATED!
WARNING: Local version: 0.88.2 Recommended version: 0.90
DON'T PANIC! Read http://www.clamav.net/faq.html
main.cvd is up to date (version: 42, sigs: 83951, f-level: 10, builder: tkojm)
WARNING: Your ClamAV installation is OUTDATED!
WARNING: Current functionality level = 8, recommended = 10
DON'T PANIC! Read http://www.clamav.net/faq.html
daily.cvd is up to date (version: 2582, sigs: 7948, f-level: 13, builder: sven)
WARNING: Your ClamAV installation is OUTDATED!
WARNING: Current functionality level = 8, recommended = 13
DON'T PANIC! Read http://www.clamav.net/faq.html

However, when I try to update it, apt tells me that I’m all up to date:

# apt-get install clamav
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
clamav is already the newest version.

Go figure eh? Apparently the newest ClamAv version is not in the Dapper repositories, and it doesn’t seem like anyone is working on packaging it for us either. I tried using the version from Debian repositories but it would not install because of dependency issues.

I guess I could try to compile it from source, but I just don’t feel like doing that right now.

I don’t really use ClamAv that extensively – i essentially just need it every once in a while to scan suspicious looking executables before I let them touch a windows machine. Any AV is good for that, as long as it works – and I’m not particularly attached to ClamAv. I just used it because it was in the repositories and could be installed easily.

If you read that message carefully, you will notice that it only refers to the actual ClamAv binaries. The virus definitions are still updated as normal so it should work. Unfortunately it doesn’t. My ClamAv did not detect a payload in a file that I know was carrying the Zlob trojan. I’m not sure if this is because my version is outdated, or if ClamAv just could not find it in general. In either case, I was not happy with it.

I decided to switch to BitDefender. You can download the linux version here. You want to grab the last package which is the most recent release in a deb format. Or you can just do:

wget http://download.bitdefender.com/unices/old/linux/free/bitde fender-console/en/BitDefender-Console-Antivirus-7.1-3.linux- gcc3x.i586.deb
dpkg -i BitDefender-Console-Antivirus-7.1-3.linux-gcc3x.i586.deb
bdc --update

It installed and updated without any issues on my machine, and works perfectly. It actually detected more infections that the ClamAv.

[tags]clamav, fresh clam, anti virus, virus, trojan, bitdefender, deb, ubuntu[/tags]