McAfee VSEL 1.9/2.0 Local Client Security Technical Implementation Guide

The McAfee VirusScan Enterprise for Linux WEB GUI is the method for configuring the McAfee VSEL on a non-managed Linux system. The WEB GUI on the system could be used maliciously to gain unauthorized access to the system. By restricting access to interface by implementing firewall rules, the risk of unauthorized access will be mitigated.

Anti-virus signature files are updated almost daily by anti-virus software vendors. These files are made available to anti-virus clients as they are published. Keeping virus signature files as current as possible is vital to the security of any system. The anti-virus software product must be configured to receive those updates automatically in order to afford the expected protection.

Malware can be hidden within archived files and passed from system to system undetected unless the archive is decompressed and each file scanned. By disabling the archive scanning capability, archives such as .tar and .tgz files will not be decompressed and any infected files in the archives would go undetected. Decompression can slow performance, however; any virus-infected file inside an archive cannot become active until it has been extracted. Recognizing the slow performance potential

Due to the ability of malware to mutate after infection, standard anti-virus signatures may not be able to catch new strains or variants of the malware. Typically, these strains and variants will share unique characteristics with others in their virus family. By using a generic signature to detect the shared characteristics, using wildcards where differences lie, the generic signature can detect viruses even if they are padded with extra, meaningless code. This method of detection is Heuristic detection.

Interpreted viruses are executed by an application. Within this subcategory, macro viruses take advantage of the capabilities of applications' macro programming language to infect application documents and document templates, while scripting viruses infect scripts that are understood by scripting languages processed by services on the OS. Many attackers use toolkits containing several different types of utilities and scripts that can be used to probe and attack hosts. Scanning for unknown macro viruses will mitigate zero-day attacks.

Potentially Unwanted Programs (PUPs) include Spyware, Adware, Remote Administration Tools, Dialers, Password Crackers, Jokes, and Key Loggers. While PUPs do not typically have any infection capability on their own, they rely on malware or other attach mechanisms to be installed onto target hosts, after which they will collect and transfer data from the host to an external host and/or will be used as attach mechanisms. Configuring the anti-virus software to attempt to clean the file first will allow for the possibility of a false positive. In most cases, however, the secondary action of delete will be used, mitigating the risk of the PUPs being installed and used maliciously.

Anti-virus software is the most commonly used technical control for malware threat mitigation. Real-time scanning of files as they are written to disk is a crucial first line of defense from malware attacks.

Anti-virus software is the most commonly used technical control for malware threat mitigation. Real-time scanning of files as they are read from disk is a crucial first line of defense from malware attacks.

When scanning for malware, excluding specific file types will increase the risk of a malware-infected file going undetected. By configuring anti-virus software to scan all file types, the scanner has a higher success rate at detecting and eradicating malware.

When anti-virus software is not configured to limit the amount of time spent trying to scan a file, the total effectiveness of the anti-virus software, and performance on the system being scanned, will be degraded. By limiting the amount of time the anti-virus software uses when scanning a file, the scan will be able to complete in a timely manner. Although the description of this requirement indicates a "maximum scan time", the intent of this requirement is to explicitly set a maximum scan time without impacting the effectiveness of the scan. Left unconfigured, the scan could run indefinitely on one file. If configured with a value of less than 45 seconds, the scanning of some files will be skipped. If configured with 45 or more seconds, the success rate of files being completely scanned is higher.

When scanning for malware, excluding specific files will increase the risk of a malware-infected file going undetected. By configuring anti-virus software without any exclusions, the scanner has a higher success rate at detecting and eradicating malware.

Malware may have infected a file that is necessary to the user. By configuring the anti-virus software to first attempt cleaning the infected file, availability to the file is not sacrificed. If a cleaning attempt is not successful, however, deleting the file is the only safe option to ensure the malware is not introduced onto the system or network.

Malware may have infected a file that is necessary to the user. By configuring the anti-virus software to first attempt cleaning the infected file, availability to the file is not sacrificed. If a cleaning attempt is not successful, however, deleting the file is the only safe option to ensure the malware is not introduced onto the system or network.

Potentially Unwanted Programs (PUPs) include Spyware, Adware, Remote Administration Tools, Dialers, Password Crackers, Jokes, and Key Loggers. While PUPs do not typically have any infection capability on their own, they rely on malware or other attach mechanisms to be installed onto target hosts, after which they will collect and transfer data from the host to an external host and/or will be used as attach mechanisms. Configuring the anti-virus software to attempt to clean the file first will allow for the possibility of a false positive. In most cases, however, the secondary action of delete will be used, mitigating the risk of the PUPs being installed and used maliciously.

Potentially Unwanted Programs (PUPs) include Spyware, Adware, Remote Administration Tools, Dialers, Password Crackers, Jokes, and Key Loggers. While PUPs do not typically have any infection capability on their own, they rely on malware or other attach mechanisms to be installed onto target hosts, after which they will collect and transfer data from the host to an external host and/or will be used as attach mechanisms. Configuring the anti-virus software to attempt to clean the file first will allow for the possibility of a false positive. In most cases, however, the secondary action of delete will be used, mitigating the risk of the PUPs being installed and used maliciously.

Anti-virus software is the most commonly used technical control for malware threat mitigation. Real-time scanning of files as they are read from disk is a crucial first line of defense from malware attacks.

Anti-virus software is the most commonly used technical control for malware threat mitigation. Real-time scanning of files as they are read from disk is a crucial first line of defense from malware attacks.

Mounting network volumes to other network systems introduces a path for malware to be introduced. It is imperative to protect Linux systems from malware introduced from those other network systems by either ensuring the remote systems are protected or by scanning files from those systems when they are accessed.

Anti-virus software is the most commonly used technical control for malware threat mitigation. Real-time scanning of files as they are read from disk is a crucial first line of defense from malware attacks but to ensure all files are frequently scanned, a regularly scheduled full scan will ensure malware missed by the real-time scanning will be detected and mitigated.

Malware is often packaged within an archive. In addition, archives might have other archives within. Not scanning archive files introduces the risk of infected files being introduced into the environment.

Due to the ability of malware to mutate after infection, standard anti-virus signatures may not be able to catch new strains or variants of the malware. Typically, these strains and variants will share unique characteristics with others in their virus family. By using a generic signature to detect the shared characteristics, using wildcards where differences lie, the generic signature can detect viruses even if they are padded with extra, meaningless code. This method of detection is Heuristic detection.

Interpreted viruses are executed by an application. Within this subcategory, macro viruses take advantage of the capabilities of applications' macro programming language to infect application documents and document templates, while scripting viruses infect scripts that are understood by scripting languages processed by services on the OS. Many attackers use toolkits containing several different types of utilities and scripts that can be used to probe and attack hosts. Scanning for unknown macro viruses will mitigate zero-day attacks.

Potentially Unwanted Programs (PUPs) include Spyware, Adware, Remote Administration Tools, Dialers, Password Crackers, Jokes, and Key Loggers. While PUPs do not typically have any infection capability on their own, they rely on malware or other attach mechanisms to be installed onto target hosts, after which they will collect and transfer data from the host to an external host and/or will be used as attach mechanisms. Configuring the anti-virus software to attempt to clean the file first will allow for the possibility of a false positive. In most cases, however, the secondary action of delete will be used, mitigating the risk of the PUPs being installed and used maliciously.

When scanning for malware, excluding specific file types will increase the risk of a malware-infected file going undetected. By configuring anti-virus software to scan all file types, the scanner has a higher success rate at detecting and eradicating malware.

Malware may have infected a file that is necessary to the user. By configuring the anti-virus software to first attempt cleaning the infected file, availability to the file is not sacrificed. If a cleaning attempt is not successful, however, deleting the file is the only safe option to ensure the malware is not introduced onto the system or network.

Malware may have infected a file that is necessary to the user. By configuring the anti-virus software to first attempt cleaning the infected file, availability to the file is not sacrificed. If a cleaning attempt is not successful, however, deleting the file is the only safe option to ensure the malware is not introduced onto the system or network.

When scanning for malware, excluding specific files will increase the risk of a malware-infected file going undetected. By configuring anti-virus software without any exclusions, the scanner has a higher success rate at detecting and eradicating malware.

Potentially Unwanted Programs (PUPs) include Spyware, Adware, Remote Administration Tools, Dialers, Password Crackers, Jokes, and Key Loggers. While PUPs do not typically have any infection capability on their own, they rely on malware or other attach mechanisms to be installed onto target hosts, after which they will collect and transfer data from the host to an external host and/or will be used as attach mechanisms. Configuring the anti-virus software to attempt to clean the file first will allow for the possibility of a false positive. In most cases, however, the secondary action of delete will be used, mitigating the risk of the PUPs being installed and used maliciously.

Potentially Unwanted Programs (PUPs) include Spyware, Adware, Remote Administration Tools, Dialers, Password Crackers, Jokes, and Key Loggers. While PUPs do not typically have any infection capability on their own, they rely on malware or other attach mechanisms to be installed onto target hosts, after which they will collect and transfer data from the host to an external host and/or will be used as attach mechanisms. Configuring the anti-virus software to attempt to clean the file first will allow for the possibility of a false positive. In most cases, however, the secondary action of delete will be used, mitigating the risk of the PUPs being installed and used maliciously.

Malware is often packaged within an archive. In addition, archives might have other archives within. Not scanning archive files introduces the risk of infected files being introduced into the environment.

When scanning for malware, excluding specific file types will increase the risk of a malware-infected file going undetected. By configuring anti-virus software to scan all file types, the scanner has a higher success rate at detecting and eradicating malware.

Mounting network volumes to other network systems introduces a path for malware to be introduced. It is imperative to protect Linux systems from malware introduced from those other network systems by either ensuring the remote systems are protected or by scanning files from those systems when they are accessed.

Removable media such as CD/DVDs allow a path for malware to be introduced to a Linux System. It is imperative to protect Linux systems from malware introduced from removable media by ensuring they are scanned before use.

Anti-virus signature files are updated almost daily by anti-virus software vendors. These files are made available to anti-virus clients as they are published. Keeping virus signature files as current as possible is vital to the security of any system. The anti-virus software product must be configured to receive those updates automatically in order to afford the expected protection. While obtaining updates, patches, service packs and updates from the vendor are timelier, the possibility of corruption or malware being introduced to the system is higher. By obtaining these from an official DoD source and/or downloading them to a separate system first and validating them before making them available to systems, the possibility of malware being introduced is mitigated.

The McAfee VirusScan Enterprise for Linux software runs its processes under the nails user, which is part of the nailsgroup group. The WEB GUI is also accessed using the nails user. Ensuring this account only has access to the required functions necessary for its intended role will mitigate the possibility of the nails user/nailsgroup group from being used to perform malicious destruction to the system in the event of a compromise.

Failure of anti-virus signature updates will eventually render the software to be useless in protecting the Linux system from malware. Administration notification for failed updates, via SMTP, will ensure timely remediation of errors causing DATs to not be updated.

The McAfee VirusScan Enterprise for Linux WEB GUI is the method for configuring the McAfee VSEL on a non-managed Linux system. The WEB GUI on the system could be used maliciously to gain unauthorized access to the system. By restricting access to interface by implementing firewall rules, the risk of unauthorized access will be mitigated.