Scan downloads automatically with Firefox

May 31st, 2007

I was looking for a way to automatically scan specific file types immediately after finishing the download instead of scanning them when unpacking or executing them. This way I could sort out malicious files immediately without having to worry about some files that contain viruses or other sorts of malware sitting on my hard drives for a longer period of time.

The Firefox extension “Download Scan” sends a request to a scanner whenever a download of a certain file type has finished. The scanner will then scan the file and report back as usual if viruses, trojans or other malicious code has been found.

download scan firefox

Several options have to be configured before you can use the extension. The most important one is of course to select a scanner that should be used to scan the downloaded files. This might sound easy but can be tricky.

I’m using AntiVir as my virus scanner and had some troubles locating the correct executable for the job. After some trial and error I was able to use avcmd.exe to scan the files. I suggest you either take a look at the website / faq / helpfile of your scanner or do trial and error as well.

After choosing the scanner you may exclude certain file types from being scanned and add arguments that shall be passed to the scanner as well. I did not research that yet but the scanner that I have chosen is opening a new DOS window for every file that is not automatically closing. This could get truly annoying when downloading a lot of files in a short time.

I suspect there must be some argument that I could add that would close the window automatically if no virus was found.