Malware Detection for Linux Servers using Maldet

Maldet is a malware scanner that’s useful on servers that accept file uploads. I use it especially on servers where I have WordPress sites hosted and it alerts me to the fact that people have used themes with Malware tucked away inside.

You can visit the Maldet website for a more detailed description.

Installation will only take a few moments and it’s a handy tool to have. It’ll also install a cronjob that will run automatically each day and alert you of any potential or found issues.

Fetch the current version of Maldet

[root@bob]#  cd /tmp
[root@bob]#  wget http://www.rfxn.com/downloads/maldetect-current.tar.gz

Unzip

[root@bob]# tar -zxvf maldetect-current.tar.gz

Installation

[root@bob]# cd maldetect-*
[root@bob]# ./install.sh

Edit Configuration File

[root@bob]# nano /usr/local/maldetect/conf.maldet

Run an on-demand Maldet scan

[root@bob] maldet /home