Virus database main.cvd uncompression

Question

In my previous question (Hexadecimal virus signatures database), I asked where I can get a hex virus signature database, and the answer was: ClamAV. So I downloaded the "main.cvd" database and was told that it was a compressed tar file. I have two questions to ask:

1. are the signatures in hex format (of course when uncompressed)?
2. how do I uncompress the "main.cvd" file to view its contents, do i just rename it to main.tar and then uncompress it?

Answer 1

I was able to do It by using a text editor and removing the first 512 bytes. Then renamed the file extension to .tar.gz and opened it using winrar

Answer 2

Run:

dd if=main.cvd of=clamav_main.tar.gz skip=1 bs=512
tar zxvf clamav_main.tar.gz
chmod 700 *

Answer 3

I have found this one-line set of commands to work nicely:

xxd -ps -s 512 <CVD-FILE> | xxd -r -ps | tar -zx