Virus Checker is a web application which, at a basic level, allows the user to enter a hash into a text field and checks if the given hash represents a virus or is malicious. The Virus Checker system has its own database, but in order to provide consistent service, the system uses third party programs and API calls in order to fill in any gaps not covered by the Virus Checker database. The database native to Virus Checker itself stores hashes as a key and associated metadata with said key in a table for the user to access via submitting a hash in the text field. If the hash that was entered does not exist in the database, Virus Checker uses API calls in order to find the metadata on the hash from the VirusTotal website. After entering a hash, the user will be shown the relevant information regardless of where the data is requested from (the native database or the 3rd party database). If an API call is used, the metadata that is output will be saved in the Virus Checker native database so that an API call will not be needed in the future for the same hash.
Virus Checker includes a user login account system. Users are able to create simple accounts in order to use Virus Checker. Each account will have a username and password and will store simple data within for the user’s convenience. Such data will include the amount of time a particular user has made an API call via hash check requests as well as previous hashes that the user has searched before. Because these API calls are limited over specific amounts of time, Virus Checkers can use this data to warn the user when they are reaching the limit of API calls. In addition, the account system will include password encryption in order to maintain a measure of security for Virus Checker users.
To run this project you will need a MySQL database, and Node.js installed
To handle API calls to Virus Total if the default key does not work you may have to create your own Virus Total Account and get a public API key.
To initialize the database the file DatabaseInit.sql contains the required sql code for initialization it is recomended when creating the database to use the the default port and password if any of these are different the sql connection variables in backend\index.js must be adjusted too. The default database password is password and the default port is 3306
It is recommended to use MySQL Workbench to initialize the database. After creating a database, connect to it with MySQL workbench and click File->Open SQL Script to open DatabaseInit.sql. You can now run the script and it will setup the database schemea, this only needs to be done once.
Now to have the database accessible during runtime in MySQL Workbench execute the query:
ALTER USER 'root'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED WITH mysql_native_password BY 'password';
if you choose to have a different password make sure to change password
Once Node.JS is installed using a command line terminal move to the frontend directory and run the command
npm install
Once this finishes move to the backend directory and once again run the command
npm install
If the default API key does not work you will now have to insert your own. In the file backend\node_modules\node-virustotal\v3.js set the variable defaultKey to the public API key obtained from Virus Total.
Once the database is running and the packages are installed running the website requires two command terminals one for the front end and one for the back end
With one of the terminals move to the backend directory and run the command:
node index.js
With the other terminal move to the frontend directory and run the command:
npm start
Now that both the front end and backend are running open a web browser and go to the site localhost:3000 to access the working website