On Dienstag, 8. Juli 2008, Fred A. Miller wrote:
Quite right, Jim. Carlos is smug about this whole issue, but because of Linux's popularity, we WILL SOON have much more of this to deal with.
Some people (many of them involved in selling antivirus software -
coincidence?) have been saying that since years. Just try a Google search
for "Linux viruses". Some examples:
http://www.desktoplinux.com/articles/AT3307459975.html (2003)
http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2116855/linux-lined-virus-target (2001)
Yet, that horror scenario has yet to materialize.
An interesting article on the topic:
http://librenix.com/?inode=21
That does not mean that security on Linux is to be taken lightly. But I don't
see any good reason for that kind of paranoia that might make me want to
dedicate a good deal of my system's performance to scanning every hard disk
block for viruses as it is read.
Just think about it: The major points of attack of the well-known Windows
viruses simply don't exist. No Linux programmer in his right mind will write
a mail client that simply executes anything that might be a piece of code in
a mail attachment. There are no ActiveX controls that are commonly downloaded
and executed as the user surfs the web. There is no plethora of games and
warez that users are so used to download and execute without thinking. And
even if any of those scenarios actually happen, it will hit that one user,
not the entire system. Sure, that's bad for that one user (and hopefully that
user has a backup of the files he invested time in on a USB stick or DVD or
some other media). But it's not the complete system that is compromised.
CU
--
Stefan Hundhammer