On Thursday 27 March 2003 21:03, Trey wrote:
How large of an issue is trojans with Linux?
Trojans are always dangerous. It's not really an OS issue If you think about it, what is a trojan? A trojan is a program that does something malicious to your system, while purporting to be something completely different. The analogy is with the trojan horse which purported to be a gift, while in fact it was one of history's first APCs :) A program, any program, could destroy your system. No operating system can ever protect you against yourself. As long as you have the authority to delete files, for example, a program could do it for you. The question is whether you want the program to do it or not. When people say that linux is "immune" to viruses, they're slightly exaggerating. The general idea is that with open source, there are so many eyes looking at the source that trojans and other malicious code will be found before it causes too much damage. This is partly true, although not completely. But that advantage is gone completely if you install precompiled binaries from people you don't know. A lot of the packages in the current apt4rpm repository are from people who made a brief appearance on this list, and then started building rpms. You have to decide if you trust a) their morality, and b) their ability to keep their systems secure. They can be as honest as a monk/rabbi/shaman but if their own systems get cracked you can't trust files from them anyway The rule of thumb has always been, and will always be: never install programs from people you don't trust. As far as the danger of viruses go, the issue there is with bugs in internet services, and how fast they get fixed. And there, linux/unix has the upper hand.