The Anti-virus Times

Friday, July 6, 2018

In our Ant-virus Times issues, we often talk about the need for users to adjust the settings of their applications to match their preferences. But what if a user doesn't have enough time or knowledge to do that? Is there a way to get an application configured and ready to be used right away?

The application Docker can help users accomplish this task. Docker performs containerisation—a technique allowing multiple isolated user-space instances (containers) to be used in order to run applications. With containerisation, programs are run in isolated containers with their specific settings and libraries. Unlike virtual machines, containers only contain data related to a specific application. The applications run on a computer's operating system but remain isolated from other applications.

Sound good? Apparently, yes. Docker images containing preconfigured applications started appearing on the Internet. But who can guarantee that, along with useful files, nothing unwanted has been placed in a container?

Five million downloads, and nobody cared to check the container's contents!

But, could it be that containers can't be scanned by an anti-virus? Let's add the EICAR test file to a container and launch our anti-virus scanner.

So it appears that none of the five million users had an anti-virus on their computers?

We'd also like to note that virtual machines may also have malware embedded in them.

No commentary required…