On Wed, 2007-10-31 at 16:17 -0700, Jerry Neal wrote:

We are talking about Linux and not Windows, right? In 9 years I have never seen even ONE Linux virus, rootkit, trojan, or malware. I've seen hundreds of them in Windows--just connect to the internet without antivirus and a firewall and you'll get a trojan in 20 minutes or less. I've seen Windows trojans so bad you had to format the hard drive 7 times to get rid of them.

Thank you for your answer. Were certainly talking about Linux which contrary to popular belief can be seriously compromised (leave your ssh port open just for fun ;) ).

In my opinion a great deal of Linux security succes is that users don't install software from all over the internet but download them from trusted repositories where the software is checked and md5summed by it's maintainers.

Since openSUSE 10.3 and the '1-Click Install service it's impossible to tell if the software come from an trusted sources if openSUSE doesn't have some kind of security measures.

And indeed while virussen aren't a problem for Linux, rootkits certainly are. See also: http://www.linuxsecurity.com/content/view/127202/171/