Fangfrisch

Fangfrisch (German for "freshly caught") is a sibling of the Clam Anti-Virus freshclam utility. It allows downloading virus definition files that are not official ClamAV canon, e.g. from Sanesecurity and URLhaus. Fangfrisch was designed with security in mind, to be run by an unprivileged user only.

1. License

This file is part of "Fangfrisch".

Fangfrisch is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

Fangfrisch is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with Fangfrisch. If not, see https://www.gnu.org/licenses/.

2. Update strategy

Fangfrisch is expected to run periodically, e.g. using cron. Download attempts are recorded in a database and new attempts are only made after the defined age threshold is reached. Fangfrisch will attempt to download digests first (if available upstream), and only retrieve corresponding virus definition files when their recorded digest changes, minimising transfer volumes.

3. Installation

Fangfrisch requires Python 3.7 or newer. Python 3.6 security support, i.e. its final lifecycle stage, was terminated in 2021 by the Python authors. Please do not ask me to modify Fangfrisch in order to support ancient Python versions, which pose a potential security risk to you.

The recommended installation method is using the pip command in a virtual Python environment. Here is an example listing of commands for BASH, to be executed as root, assuming that you will be running Fangfrisch as an unprivileged user who is member of the clamav group:

3.1. Create home directory

mkdir -m 0770 -p /var/lib/fangfrisch
chgrp clamav /var/lib/fangfrisch

This will grant group members the necessary write access to create the database (see Section 6).

3.2. Prepare and activate venv

cd /var/lib/fangfrisch
python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate

3.3. Install via PyPI

pip install fangfrisch

This step will also create an executable launcher script venv/bin/fangfrisch.

4. Installation packages

As an alternative to pip-based installation, there are packages available for the following Linux distributions:

Archlinux: packages/python-fangfrisch. Support contact: Archlinux package maintainer.
Clear Linux: clearlinux-pkgs/fangfrisch. Support contact: Clear Linux package maintainers.
Gentoo Linux: app-antivirus/fangfrisch. Support contact: Fangfrisch author.

5. Configuration

A configuration file is mandatory, uses an INI-File-like structure and must contain a db_url entry. All other settings are optional. However, unless you enable one signature file provider section, Fangfrisch naturally won’t do much.

Use the --conf command line argument (see Section 7) to specify the path to your configuration file. Note that there is no default location.

# Minimal example configuration, meant for testing.

[DEFAULT]
db_url = sqlite:////var/lib/fangfrisch/db.sqlite
local_directory = /var/lib/clamav

[urlhaus]
enabled = yes

cleanup: Cleanup method used for provider sections. Default: automatic, alternative: disabled. In automatic mode, Fangfrisch will attempt to delete obsolete virus definition files whenever you disable a provider section. Should you disable this option, orphaned files will be left behind, and you need to ensure cleanup by different means.
db_url: Database URL in SQLAlchemy syntax. Mandatory, no default. Typically, a local SQLite database will suffice.
enabled: Scan this section for URLs? Default: false.
integrity_check: Mechanism for integrity checks. Default: sha256. You can use disabled if the signature file provider offers no checksums.
interval: Interval between downloads. Defaults are provider-dependent. Values can be expressed in human-readable form (e.g. 12h or 45m). Please respect the limits set by each provider.
local_directory: Downloaded files are stored here. No default, so the current working directory of the Python process is used. As this can vary depending on how you launch Fangfrisch, it is highly recommended to define an absolute path like /var/lib/clamav instead. You can override this option in provider sections to separate downloads based on origin.
log_format: See Formatter class documentation for details. Fangfrisch uses sensible defaults depending on the selected log method.
log_level: Choose one of DEBUG, INFO, WARNING (default), ERROR or FATAL.
log_method: Either console (default, meaning stdout/stderr) or syslog. For the latter, you can also specify a log_target.
log_target: The syslog target address. Typical values are /dev/log (local Linux domain socket), localhost or host.domain.tld:udpport. If no target is specified, localhost is assumed. The UDP port number defaults to 514.
max_size: Maximum expected file size. The default is 10MB, but all predefined providers have individual size limits (see Appendix A). Values are can be expressed in human-readable form (e.g. 250KB or 3MB). Fangfrisch attempts to inspect the content length before downloading virus signature files so as not to download files larger than the defined limit. If providers don’t respond with content length information, Fangfrisch will log a warning but download the data anyway.
on_update_exec: If any files were downloaded during a pass, a command can be executed in after the pass finishes. No default. A typical value is clamdscan --reload.
on_update_timeout: Timeout for the on_update_exec command, in seconds. Default: 30.

See here for details about the configuration parser and extended interpolation. Section 5.3 provides additional information on how configuration options are interpreted.

5.1. Default providers

Fangfrisch contains internal defaults for the following providers (in alphabetical order):

The internal default values for providers can be used by specifiying enabled = yes in the desired sections. Some providers require additional configuration as shown in the following example.

# Example configuration

[DEFAULT]
db_url = sqlite:////var/lib/fangfrisch/db.sqlite

# The following settings are optional. Other sections inherit
# values from DEFAULT and may also overwrite values.

local_directory = /var/lib/clamav
max_size = 5MB
on_update_exec = clamdscan --reload
on_update_timeout = 42

[malwarepatrol]
enabled = yes
# Replace with your personal Malwarepatrol receipt
receipt = abcd1234

[sanesecurity]
enabled = yes

[securiteinfo]
enabled = yes
# Replace with your personal SecuriteInfo customer ID
customer_id = abcdef123456

[urlhaus]
enabled = yes
max_size = 2MB

5.2. User-defined providers

Fangfrisch is of course not limited to the internal defaults. You can define as many additional virus definition providers as you like. The following defines a fictional provider:

[fictionalprovider]
enabled = yes
integrity_check = md5
interval = 90m
prefix = http://fictional-provider.tld/clamav-unofficial/

# Reference the defined prefix in URL definitions. Values in
# other sections can be referenced using ${section:option}.
url_eggs = ${prefix}eggs.ndb
url_spam = ${prefix}spam.hdb

# Override local file name for url_spam
filename_spam = spam_spam_spam_lovely_spam.db

# Execute command after each fresh download from url_eggs
on_update_eggs = echo Fresh eggs in {path}

5.3. Semantics

Fangfrisch will scan enabled sections for lines prefixed with url_ to determine download sources for virus definition files.

The value of integrity_check determines both the expected filename suffix for digests and the hashing mechanism used for verification.
Local file names will be determined by parsing URLs, but can be manually overridden. To change the file name for url_xyz, set filename_xyz to the desired value.
To launch a command after data was downloaded for url_xyz, define on_update_xyz. The command string may contain a {path} placeholder, which will be substituted with the full path of the downloaded file.

You can disable refresh operations for selected URLs by assigning either an empty value or setting it to url_xyz = disabled. Note that disabling URLs in this manner does not delete any previously downloaded files.

5.4. Proxy support

Fangfrisch relies on the requests library to download files, which supports environment variables like HTTPS_PROXY. Please refer to section Advanced Usage, subsection Proxies in the requests online documentation for details.

6. Preparing the database

After completing the configuration, make sure to create the database structure by running the initdb command in a root shell as shown below. Running --force initdb will drop existing database tables. For SQLite, deleting the database file is a viable alternative.

sudo -u clamav -- fangfrisch --conf /etc/fangfrisch.conf initdb

Important

Fangfrisch need never be run as root. Choose an unprivileged user instead (typically clamav).

7. Usage

You can display command line arguments as follows:

$ fangfrisch --help

usage: fangfrisch [-h] [-c CONF] [-f] [-p PROVIDER]
                  {dumpconf,dumpmappings,initdb,refresh}

Update and verify unofficial ClamAV signatures.

positional arguments:
  {dumpconf,dumpmappings,initdb,refresh}

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -c CONF, --conf CONF  configuration file
  -f, --force           force action (default: False)
  -p PROVIDER, --provider PROVIDER
                        provider name filter (regular expression)

You can choose among following actions:

dumpconf: Dump the effective configuration to stdout, combining both internal defaults and your own settings. The effective configuration for the example shown in Section 5 is available in Appendix B.
dumpmappings: Dump URL-to-filepath mappings, as recorded in the database refresh log, to stdout. See Appendix C for details.
initdb: Create the database structure. This needs to be run only once, before the first refresh. Using the --force option will drop existing tables from the database.
refresh: Refresh the configured URLs. The --force option can be used to override download interval settings.

As stated before, Fangfrisch is typically run using cron. An example crontab looks like this:

HOME=/var/lib/fangfrisch
LOG_LEVEL=INFO
# minute hour day-of-month month day-of-week user command
*/15 * * * * clamav venv/bin/fangfrisch --conf /etc/fangfrisch.conf refresh

8. Support

The project is hosted on GitHub. Before opening tickets or contacting the author, always check existing issues first, including closed ones. This is not meant to discourage you; it just saves time and effort for all involved. Please contact the author Ralph Seichter only after having done your "research". Thank you.

8.1. Reporting problems

If you experience problems, please start by trying to figure out underlying issues on your own. Running with DEBUG level logging helps with that. Should your efforts fail, consider filing a GitHub issue. Each issue needs to answer the questions listed below.

If you answer question number 1, 2 or 3 with "no", do not file an issue. Please answer all other questions as detailed as you can, within reason.

Have you checked the documentation?
Have you checked all existing issues, including closed ones?
Have you done your personal best to resolve the issue on your own?
What exactly did you do?
What did you expect to happen?
What happened instead?
What was your exact setup (operating system, Python core version, Python module versions)?

8.2. Submitting suggestions

The list of questions is shorter, but important nonetheless:

Have you checked the documentation?
Have you checked all existing issues, including closed ones?
Do you consider the suggested feature helpful for more people than just yourself?

If you answered "yes" for all questions, please explain your idea in a sufficiently thorough manner. Use examples, graphics, and whatever else you think would help others to understand your suggestion.

Appendix A: Default configuration

Fangfrisch contains the following internal configuration settings as defaults. All sections are disabled, and entries with the !url_ prefix are included for reference only. These represent data sources which either have a high risk of false positives or are not free to use. Enabling a section will not enable these specially prefixed entries.

[DEFAULT]
cleanup = automatic
enabled = false
integrity_check = sha256
log_level = WARNING
log_method = console
max_size = 10MB

[malwarepatrol]
interval = 1d
integrity_check = disabled
product = 8
receipt = you_forgot_to_configure_receipt
prefix = https://lists.malwarepatrol.net/cgi/getfile?product=${product}&receipt=${receipt}&list=
url_clamav_basic = ${prefix}clamav_basic
filename_clamav_basic = malwarepatrol.db

[sanesecurity]
interval = 2h
prefix = http://ftp.swin.edu.au/sanesecurity/
!url_foxhole_all_cdb = ${prefix}foxhole_all.cdb
!url_foxhole_all_ndb = ${prefix}foxhole_all.ndb
!url_foxhole_mail = ${prefix}foxhole_mail.cdb
!url_scamnailer = ${prefix}scamnailer.ndb
!url_winnow_phish_complete = ${prefix}winnow_phish_complete.ndb
url_badmacro = ${prefix}badmacro.ndb
url_blurl = ${prefix}blurl.ndb
url_bofhland_cracked_url = ${prefix}bofhland_cracked_URL.ndb
url_bofhland_malware_attach = ${prefix}bofhland_malware_attach.hdb
url_bofhland_malware_url = ${prefix}bofhland_malware_URL.ndb
url_bofhland_phishing_url = ${prefix}bofhland_phishing_URL.ndb
url_foxhole_filename = ${prefix}foxhole_filename.cdb
url_foxhole_generic = ${prefix}foxhole_generic.cdb
url_foxhole_js_cdb = ${prefix}foxhole_js.cdb
url_foxhole_js_ndb = ${prefix}foxhole_js.ndb
url_hackingteam = ${prefix}hackingteam.hsb
url_junk = ${prefix}junk.ndb
url_jurlbl = ${prefix}jurlbl.ndb
url_jurlbla = ${prefix}jurlbla.ndb
url_lott = ${prefix}lott.ndb
url_malwareexpert_fp = ${prefix}malware.expert.fp
url_malwareexpert_hdb = ${prefix}malware.expert.hdb
url_malwareexpert_ldb = ${prefix}malware.expert.ldb
url_malwareexpert_ndb = ${prefix}malware.expert.ndb
url_malwarehash = ${prefix}malwarehash.hsb
url_phish = ${prefix}phish.ndb
url_phishtank = ${prefix}phishtank.ndb
url_porcupine = ${prefix}porcupine.ndb
url_rogue = ${prefix}rogue.hdb
url_scam = ${prefix}scam.ndb
url_shelter = ${prefix}shelter.ldb
url_spamattach = ${prefix}spamattach.hdb
url_spamimg = ${prefix}spamimg.hdb
url_spear = ${prefix}spear.ndb
url_spearl = ${prefix}spearl.ndb
url_winnow_attachments = ${prefix}winnow.attachments.hdb
url_winnow_bad_cw = ${prefix}winnow_bad_cw.hdb
url_winnow_extended_malware = ${prefix}winnow_extended_malware.hdb
url_winnow_extended_malware_links = ${prefix}winnow_extended_malware_links.ndb
url_winnow_malware = ${prefix}winnow_malware.hdb
url_winnow_malware_links = ${prefix}winnow_malware_links.ndb
url_winnow_phish_complete_url = ${prefix}winnow_phish_complete_url.ndb
url_winnow_spam_complete = ${prefix}winnow_spam_complete.ndb

[securiteinfo]
customer_id = you_forgot_to_configure_customer_id
interval = 1h
max_size = 20MB
prefix = https://www.securiteinfo.com/get/signatures/${customer_id}/
!url_0hour = ${prefix}securiteinfo0hour.hdb
!url_old = ${prefix}securiteinfoold.hdb
!url_securiteinfo_mdb = ${prefix}securiteinfo.mdb
!url_spam_marketing = ${prefix}spam_marketing.ndb
url_android = ${prefix}securiteinfoandroid.hdb
url_ascii = ${prefix}securiteinfoascii.hdb
url_html = ${prefix}securiteinfohtml.hdb
url_javascript = ${prefix}javascript.ndb
url_pdf = ${prefix}securiteinfopdf.hdb
url_securiteinfo = ${prefix}securiteinfo.hdb
url_securiteinfo_ign2 = ${prefix}securiteinfo.ign2

[urlhaus]
interval = 10m
url_urlhaus = https://urlhaus.abuse.ch/downloads/urlhaus.ndb

Appendix B: Effective configuration

The following effective configuration is the result of combining internal defaults (see Appendix A) with the example settings shown in Section 5.

[DEFAULT]
cleanup = automatic
enabled = false
integrity_check = sha256
log_level = WARNING
log_method = console
max_size = 5MB
db_url = sqlite:////var/lib/fangfrisch/db.sqlite
local_directory = /var/lib/clamav
on_update_exec = clamdscan --reload
on_update_timeout = 42

[malwarepatrol]
interval = 1d
integrity_check = disabled
product = 8
receipt = abcd1234
prefix = https://lists.malwarepatrol.net/cgi/getfile?product=${product}&receipt=${receipt}&list=
url_clamav_basic = ${prefix}clamav_basic
filename_clamav_basic = malwarepatrol.db
enabled = yes

[sanesecurity]
interval = 2h
prefix = http://ftp.swin.edu.au/sanesecurity/
!url_foxhole_all_cdb = ${prefix}foxhole_all.cdb
!url_foxhole_all_ndb = ${prefix}foxhole_all.ndb
!url_foxhole_mail = ${prefix}foxhole_mail.cdb
!url_scamnailer = ${prefix}scamnailer.ndb
!url_winnow_phish_complete = ${prefix}winnow_phish_complete.ndb
url_badmacro = ${prefix}badmacro.ndb
url_blurl = ${prefix}blurl.ndb
url_bofhland_cracked_url = ${prefix}bofhland_cracked_URL.ndb
url_bofhland_malware_attach = ${prefix}bofhland_malware_attach.hdb
url_bofhland_malware_url = ${prefix}bofhland_malware_URL.ndb
url_bofhland_phishing_url = ${prefix}bofhland_phishing_URL.ndb
url_foxhole_filename = ${prefix}foxhole_filename.cdb
url_foxhole_generic = ${prefix}foxhole_generic.cdb
url_foxhole_js_cdb = ${prefix}foxhole_js.cdb
url_foxhole_js_ndb = ${prefix}foxhole_js.ndb
url_hackingteam = ${prefix}hackingteam.hsb
url_junk = ${prefix}junk.ndb
url_jurlbl = ${prefix}jurlbl.ndb
url_jurlbla = ${prefix}jurlbla.ndb
url_lott = ${prefix}lott.ndb
url_malwareexpert_fp = ${prefix}malware.expert.fp
url_malwareexpert_hdb = ${prefix}malware.expert.hdb
url_malwareexpert_ldb = ${prefix}malware.expert.ldb
url_malwareexpert_ndb = ${prefix}malware.expert.ndb
url_malwarehash = ${prefix}malwarehash.hsb
url_phish = ${prefix}phish.ndb
url_phishtank = ${prefix}phishtank.ndb
url_porcupine = ${prefix}porcupine.ndb
url_rogue = ${prefix}rogue.hdb
url_scam = ${prefix}scam.ndb
url_shelter = ${prefix}shelter.ldb
url_spamattach = ${prefix}spamattach.hdb
url_spamimg = ${prefix}spamimg.hdb
url_spear = ${prefix}spear.ndb
url_spearl = ${prefix}spearl.ndb
url_winnow_attachments = ${prefix}winnow.attachments.hdb
url_winnow_bad_cw = ${prefix}winnow_bad_cw.hdb
url_winnow_extended_malware = ${prefix}winnow_extended_malware.hdb
url_winnow_extended_malware_links = ${prefix}winnow_extended_malware_links.ndb
url_winnow_malware = ${prefix}winnow_malware.hdb
url_winnow_malware_links = ${prefix}winnow_malware_links.ndb
url_winnow_phish_complete_url = ${prefix}winnow_phish_complete_url.ndb
url_winnow_spam_complete = ${prefix}winnow_spam_complete.ndb
enabled = yes

[securiteinfo]
customer_id = abcdef123456
interval = 1h
max_size = 20MB
prefix = https://www.securiteinfo.com/get/signatures/${customer_id}/
!url_0hour = ${prefix}securiteinfo0hour.hdb
!url_old = ${prefix}securiteinfoold.hdb
!url_securiteinfo_mdb = ${prefix}securiteinfo.mdb
!url_spam_marketing = ${prefix}spam_marketing.ndb
url_android = ${prefix}securiteinfoandroid.hdb
url_ascii = ${prefix}securiteinfoascii.hdb
url_html = ${prefix}securiteinfohtml.hdb
url_javascript = ${prefix}javascript.ndb
url_pdf = ${prefix}securiteinfopdf.hdb
url_securiteinfo = ${prefix}securiteinfo.hdb
url_securiteinfo_ign2 = ${prefix}securiteinfo.ign2
enabled = yes

[urlhaus]
interval = 10m
url_urlhaus = https://urlhaus.abuse.ch/downloads/urlhaus.ndb
enabled = yes
max_size = 2MB

Appendix C: Database structure

While users can technically access the Fangfrisch backend database directly, its structure and content are considered private. They may change at any time, without notice. Related complaints will be filed under SEP.

C.1. Accessing mappings

In contrast to direct database access, the dumpmappings action allows accessing selected parts of database entries in a stable manner. Specifically, it returns 3-tuples (provider name, URL, local file path). Elements are separated by horizontal tabulators to facilitate piping the output into awk or similar utilities. If specified, the provider option is interpreted as a regular expression, and only DB records with matching provider column are returned. That means if you have providers foo and foobar, you need to use anchoring (e.g. ^foo$) if you only wish to match entries for the former provider. Make sure to use quoting as required by your shell. Example usage:

# Print all recorded mappings for the [example] provider section.
fangfrisch --conf /etc/fangfrisch.conf --provider '^example$' dumpmappings

# Delete all files that were downloaded by Fangfrisch.
# DON'T EXECUTE THIS UNLESS YOU REALLY MEAN IT!
fangfrisch --conf /etc/fangfrisch.conf dumpmappings | awk '{print $3}' | xargs /bin/rm