[svlug] Avoiding Windows cooties

[Mark Weisler]

On Sunday 04 February 2007 23:25, Skip Evans wrote:
> Hey all,
>
> As I've said before, but just to be clear, we are a
> PHP/MySQL development shop and pretty much use
> fBSD/Linux for servers and workstations
> respectively, and so far have had only one Windows
> machine on the network for IE testing.
>
> However, it's only really used to connect via HTTP
> to development sites on the servers and we've never
> set up Samba or any other way (not that I know of
> any others) for it to mount the server drives, etc.
>
> I haven't bothered doing this because there hasn't
> really been a dire need (ftp'ing stuff to it or from
> it has sufficed for what little movement of files
> required to date) and I've always thought that
> keeping it off the server's drives might help avoid
> it spreading any Windows cooties around the network.
>
> First, am I right in assuming that not letting it
> Samba to other machines is at least some small
> protection from it placing infected files on the
> *Nix machines?
>
> I do update the virus protection software on it when
> it says to do so, but frankly, it gets so little use
> and I so much prefer to work on my Linux workstation
> that I am not up on the latest Windows viruses and
> their protective software.
>
> Secondly, it looks like now we're going to have to
> get another Windows machine and Samba it up (or some
> other way) because we will soon be developing
> projects using Flash 8 for forms and communicating
> with PHP on the server side and our design guy is
> going to be more affective if he can save files
> directly to dev sites instead of having to FTP
> everything.
>
> So I guess the first thing I need to do is research
> a little about once I do install Samba on the
> servers, what resources are there for protecting the
> servers from Windows cooties infected files, or if
> there is anything to be done.
>
> I'm pretty green here, so any resources you may know
> to point me to would be greatly appreciated.
>
> Right now I'm just Googling around a bit for Samba
> and trying to spot pages that might touch upon my
> question, but so far haven't found anything truly
> relevant, but I'm just getting started and was
> thinking maybe some of you may know a more direct
> path to docs pertaining to this issue.
>
> Thanks!

To recap:
* in your environment you are moving from several Linux computers and one 
Windows computer to include two or more Windows computers.
* the computers will share data probably via Samba
* there is a particular concern about Windows machines infecting each other 
(and maybe outsiders who interact with your systems)

You might look into http://www.openantivirus.org/ for what I call "virus 
scrubbers"  to cleanse Windows files. (I've used Trend in the past in 
the "enterprise" world but the large scale of that solution is probably not 
what you are looking for.)

An advantage to this is ease of use of Samba compared to a version control 
system (but a version control system is good 
control and discipline for development situations and might also be used). If 
you develop in-house proficiency with Samba including virus scrubbing it can 
be a marketable solution for your client work.


-- 
Mark Weisler