How to Check JPG Files for Viruses, Malware, and Format Issues in Node.js

Image file formats like JPG can easily contain viruses and malware, and they can also pose a risk to JPG rendering and parsing programs if they don’t conform strictly to JPG formatting standards.

Writing code to check JPG files (let alone any file type) for multiple threats at once can be challenging and complex. Thankfully, however, we can make things a lot easier by calling a free API using Node.js code examples.

Using code examples provided below, we’ll be able to scan JPG files for viruses and malware and simultaneously deep-verify files at the encoding level to ensure they meet stringent JPG formatting requirements.

This way, we can identify potentially malicious JPGs intended for a wide range of unique nefarious purposes.

To call this API, let’s start by installing the SDK. We can install via NPM install by running following command:

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

We could also, alternatively, add the following snippet to our package.json:

  "dependencies": {
    "cloudmersive-virus-api-client": "^1.1.9"
  }

We can then use the below code to call the function. We’ll notice we have the option to set a few custom threat rules in our request body; we can use these to trigger “CleanResult”: False responses for a few different content threat detection scenarios (e.g., we can set ‘allowInvalidFiles’ to false to treat invalid JPGs the same way we treat JPGs containing malware).

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';



var apiInstance = new CloudmersiveVirusApiClient.ScanApi();

var inputFile = Buffer.from(fs.readFileSync("C:\\temp\\inputfile").buffer); // 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, Python 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).
  'allowMacros': true, // Boolean | Set to false to block macros and other threats embedded in document files, such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint embedded Macros, and other files that contain embedded content threats.  Set to true to allow these file types.  Default is false (recommended).
  'allowXmlExternalEntities': true, // Boolean | Set to false to block XML External Entities and other threats embedded in XML files, and other files that contain embedded content threats.  Set to true to allow these file types.  Default is false (recommended).
  'allowInsecureDeserialization': true, // Boolean | Set to false to block Insecure Deserialization and other threats embedded in JSON and other object serialization files, and other files that contain embedded content threats.  Set to true to allow these file types.  Default is false (recommended).
  'allowHtml': true, // Boolean | Set to false to block HTML input in the top level file; HTML can contain XSS, scripts, local file accesses and other threats.  Set to true to allow these file types.  Default is false (recommended) [for API keys created prior to the release of this feature default is true for backward compatability].
  '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);

To authorize our API calls, we’ll need a free Cloudmersive API key. This will allow us to make up to 800 API calls per month with no additional commitments (once we reach our call limit, it’ll simply reset the following month).

Now we have a simple, low-code solution for detecting a wide range of potential JPG threats.