Chainguard Container for clamav-fips

ClamAV® is an open source antivirus engine for detecting trojans, viruses, malware & other malicious threats.

Chainguard Containers are regularly-updated, secure-by-default container images.

Download this Container Image

For those with access, this container image is available on cgr.dev:

docker pull cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/clamav-fips:latest

Be sure to replace the ORGANIZATION placeholder with the name used for your organization's private repository within the Chainguard Registry.

Compatibility Notes

This image is comparable to the ClamAV image on Docker Hub. Switching to Chainguard's image should not require any changes to your existing setup. This image contains only the minimum set of tools and dependencies needed to function; for example, it does not include a package manager.

FIPS support

Chainguard's clamav-fips image ships with a validated redistribution of the OpenSSL FIPS provider module and comes pre-configured with FIPSCryptoHashLimits yes in both clamd.conf and freshclam.conf. For more on FIPS support in Chainguard container images, consult the guide on FIPS-enabled Chainguard Images on Chainguard Academy.

Getting Started

While the official documentation does not provide a clear way to deploy the image on Kubernetes, you can use the following commands to deploy ClamAV on your Kubernetes cluster with Helm.

Start by creating a values.yaml file:

cat <<EOF > values.yaml
image:
  repository: cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/clamav
  tag: latest
EOF

Now, you can install the Helm Chart:

helm install clamav oci://registry.gitlab.com/xrow-public/helm-clamav/charts/clamav -f values.yaml

When the Pod(s) are running, you can use the following command to scan a file:

# Port-forward to the ClamAV service
kubectl port-forward service/clamav 3310 &
# Download a test file from EICAR
wget https://www.eicar.org/download/eicar-com-2/\?wpdmdl\=8842 -O eicar-com.txt
# Extract the content of the file to a variable
EICAR_CONTENT=$(cat eicar-com.txt)
# Get the Pod name to execute the scan
POD_NAME=$(kubectl get pods -l app.kubernetes.io/instance=clamav -o jsonpath='{.items[0].metadata.name}')
# Execute the test inside the ClamAV pod:
kubectl exec -it ${POD_NAME} -- sh -c "echo '${EICAR_CONTENT}' > /tmp/eicar.txt && clamscan /tmp/eicar.txt"
# Expected output will be similar to: "EICAR_HDB-1 FOUND"

Deploying in FIPS Mode

The clamav-fips image is ready to use in FIPS-enabled environments without additional configuration. ClamAV 1.5.0+ automatically detects FIPS-mode environments and applies the following FIPS-compatible features:

• Restricts MD5 and SHA1 usage for signature verification (via FIPSCryptoHashLimits yes)
• Uses SHA2-256 for the clean-file scan cache
• Verifies CVD signature databases using FIPS-compatible external .sign signature files

Verifying FIPS Mode

After deploying the image, verify FIPS mode is active by checking the ClamAV logs:

# For Kubernetes deployments
kubectl logs -l app.kubernetes.io/instance=clamav | grep -i fips

# For Docker deployments
docker logs <container-id> | grep -i fips

You should see log entries indicating FIPS limits are enabled.

For more details on ClamAV FIPS features, see the ClamAV 1.5.0 release announcement.

Update the Database Definitions

ClamAV automatically updates its database definitions on Pod startup. But if you want to update the definitions manually, you can exec into the Pod and run the freshclam command, and expect the Database test passed. log messages. Jump to linked documentation for more information.

Documentation and Resources

You can learn more about ClamAV via the official documentation. Additionally, you can find the Helm Chart on Artifact Hub. To update the database definitions, you can refer to the Updating Signature Databases documentation.

What are Chainguard Containers?

Chainguard's free tier of Starter container images are built with Wolfi, our minimal Linux undistro.

All other Chainguard Containers are built with Chainguard OS, Chainguard's minimal Linux operating system designed to produce container images that meet the requirements of a more secure software supply chain.

The main features of Chainguard Containers include:

• Minimal design, without unnecessary software bloat
• Daily builds to ensure container images are up-to-date with available security patches
• High quality build-time SBOMs attesting to the provenance of all artifacts within the image
• Verifiable signatures provided by Sigstore
• Reproducible builds with Cosign and apko (read more about reproducibility)

For cases where you need container images with shells and package managers to build or debug, most Chainguard Containers come paired with a development, or -dev, variant.

In all other cases, including Chainguard Containers tagged as :latest or with a specific version number, the container images include only an open-source application and its runtime dependencies. These minimal container images typically do not contain a shell or package manager.

Although the -dev container image variants have similar security features as their more minimal versions, they include additional software that is typically not necessary in production environments. We recommend using multi-stage builds to copy artifacts from the -dev variant into a more minimal production image.

Need additional packages?

To improve security, Chainguard Containers include only essential dependencies. Need more packages? Chainguard customers can use Custom Assembly to add packages, either through the Console, chainctl, or API.

To use Custom Assembly in the Chainguard Console: navigate to the image you'd like to customize in your Organization's list of images, and click on the Customize image button at the top of the page.

Learn More

Refer to our Chainguard Containers documentation on Chainguard Academy. Chainguard also offers VMs and Libraries — contact us for access.

Trademarks

This software listing is packaged by Chainguard. The trademarks set forth in this offering are owned by their respective companies, and use of them does not imply any affiliation, sponsorship, or endorsement by such companies.