Mailinglist Archive: opensuse (2803 mails)

[Lars Marowsky-Bree <lmb@xxxxxxx>]

On 2008-07-13T16:48:03, John Andersen <jsamyth@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> > It's true that a traditional system setup has difficulty in spreading
> > viruses, but against trojans the system is just as vulnerable; and local
> > root exploits are not that rare, either.
> Why do you say the system is just as vulnerable against/to trojans
>
> Trojans usually involve a replacement module for a system module.
> To get a trojan to work on linux, you have to:
>  1) Convince someone to download it,
>  2) put it in the path (usually ~/bin)
>  3) mark it executable

Binary trojans, if downloaded, are the same - if the user downloads and
installs a binary from some untrusted source, they are vulnerable. That
we don't see so many of those happening appears to be more of a social
line of defense (users not as stupid and prefering to use "official"
repos) than a technical one.

For trojans in openoffice documents for example, I'd dare say that
technically, that's just as vulnerable as on Windows.

> Local root exploits generally require the same.  You have to get
> something to execute before it can exploit any pre-existing
> root weakness.

True. But weaknesses exist in webbrowsers, and we've had exploitable
PNGs, flash, java, ...

Sure, Linux is good, but it's not perfect, and I think we should not
rest on our achievements, but need to be careful to stay ahead.


Regards,
    Lars

-- 
Teamlead Kernel, SuSE Labs, Research and Development
SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, GF: Markus Rex, HRB 16746 (AG Nürnberg)
"Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes." -- Oscar Wilde

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