Avast antivirus for linux

[Derek Broughton]

Felipe Figueiredo wrote:

> BTW, antivirus is not about protection at all. It tries to remedy a
> situation in which you are already compromised. 

Agreed.
> 
> Besides, an important security point is to have the least ammount of code
> running, so if antivirus is not needed, you shouldn't use it, since it
> would need severe priviledge 

Why?  I don't run any antivirus software, so I could easily be missing
something but surely it _needs_ to run only on interfaces to the outside
world - so it checks my mail as I download it (which it can do as either
the mail user or the recipient), it checks files loaded from the web (which
would have to be as the browser user), and it checks removable media
(again, as the user who mounts it).  I wouldn't be surprised if such
software often does run with "severe privilege" but it certainly shouldn't
be necessary.
-- 
derek