How to Block Malicious Uploads in Node.JS

File uploads are a trending means of attack among hacker groups this year, with an alarming number of sites falling victim to uploaded malware, script attacks, and executables masked as innocent files. By the end of this post, you will be fully equipped with cutting edge virus scanning protection, as well as zero day threat detection capability. As an added bonus, the entire setup will only take a few minutes of your valuable time.

To begin, we will need to install our client library using npm install.

npm install cloudmersive-virus-api-client --save

Now we can go ahead and call scanFileAdvanced using our file to be scanned.

var CloudmersiveVirusApiClient = require('cloudmersive-virus-api-client');
var defaultClient = CloudmersiveVirusApiClient.ApiClient.instance;
// Configure API key authorization: Apikey
var Apikey = defaultClient.authentications['Apikey'];
Apikey.apiKey = 'YOUR API KEY';
// Uncomment the following line to set a prefix for the API key, e.g. "Token" (defaults to null)
//Apikey.apiKeyPrefix = 'Token';
var apiInstance = new CloudmersiveVirusApiClient.ScanApi();
var inputFile = "/path/to/file"; // File | Input file to perform the operation on.
var opts = {
'allowExecutables': true, // Boolean | Set to false to block executable files (program code) from being allowed in the input file.  Default is false (recommended).
'allowInvalidFiles': true, // Boolean | Set to false to block invalid files, such as a PDF file that is not really a valid PDF file, or a Word Document that is not a valid Word Document.  Default is false (recommended).
'allowScripts': true, // Boolean | Set to false to block script files, such as a PHP files, Pythong scripts, and other malicious content or security threats that can be embedded in the file.  Set to true to allow these file types.  Default is false (recommended).
'allowPasswordProtectedFiles': true, // Boolean | Set to false to block password protected and encrypted files, such as encrypted zip and rar files, and other files that seek to circumvent scanning through passwords.  Set to true to allow these file types.  Default is false (recommended).
'restrictFileTypes': "restrictFileTypes_example" // String | Specify a restricted set of file formats to allow as clean as a comma-separated list of file formats, such as .pdf,.docx,.png would allow only PDF, PNG and Word document files.  All files must pass content verification against this list of file formats, if they do not, then the result will be returned as CleanResult=false.  Set restrictFileTypes parameter to null or empty string to disable; default is disabled.
};
var callback = function(error, data, response) {
if (error) {
console.error(error);
} else {
console.log('API called successfully. Returned data: ' + data);
}
};
apiInstance.scanFileAdvanced(inputFile, opts, callback);

As you can see, there are many options that can be customized to fit your security needs, with the default settings providing you with full zero day threat protection.