Want to scan your files for security threats? Here a new app can do the job for Linux Desktop.

It’s Lenspect, a free open-source Python written application that features a lightweight user interface designed for GNOME. And, it uses VirusTotal as backend for scanning.

As you may know, there’s a ClamAV AntiVirus software that supports Linux. It has a graphical front-end ClamTk (available in App Center or Ubuntu Software), that provides simple interface to scan your files or directories for malware.

ClamTk

ClamAV is great for basic use, but if you want to check for viruses that ClamAV may have missed or verify against any false positives, then VirusTotal is a good alternative and Lenspect is a graphical front-end for it working on Linux.

Lendspect

VirusTotal is an online service created by the Spanish security company Hispasec Sistemas. The company now belongs to Google Security Operations, a subsidiary of Google.

It’s a free service that aggregates over 70 antivirus engines and URL/domain blocklisting services called Contributors. They include Arcabit, Avast, BitDefender, ClamAV, McAfee, and more. See this page for all the scanning engines.

With it, you may scan files, IPs, and URLs to detect malware with multiple anti-malware or antivirus engines concurrently. Though as an online service, you need to upload file through either its web page, browser extension, or API.

Lenspect uses VirusTotal API to upload you files, then show you a scan summary, while you may click open in VirusTotal website for a more detailed information, including analysis from different antivirus products, file details, and more.

View scan details in virustotal.com

The standard API is free but has limitations. They include 4 lookups per min, 500 lookups per day, 15.5 K lookups per month, and non-business use.

Install Lenspect

NOTE that the app will send your file to VirusTotal, DON’T use it for scanning sensitive data.

Lenspect is available to install in most Linux through Flatpak package, which runs in sandbox environment.

Linux Mint and Fedora Workstation may simply search & install the application from either Software Manager or GNOME Software.

While Ubuntu and other Linux can do the steps below one by one to get it:

• First, open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run command to install Flatpak daemon package:

  sudo apt install flatpak

  For non-debian/ubuntu based distributions, follow the official setup guide to enable Flatpak support.

• Next, install the app package by running command:

  flatpak install https://dl.flathub.org/repo/appstream/io.github.vmkspv.lenspect.flatpakref

  

After installation, log out and back in if you don’t see the app icon, or run the command below to start it from terminal:

flatpak run io.github.vmkspv.lenspect

While you may replace run with update in last command to check updates.

Uninstall:

To uninstall the app, simply open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run command:

flatpak uninstall --delete-data io.github.vmkspv.lenspect

Also run flatpak uninstall --unused to remove useless runtimes to free up disk space.