[NTLUG:Discuss] Virus / Worm problems

[steve]

Terry Henderson wrote:
> TRUE or FALSE?:
> 
> For Linux users; virus / worms are not a problem and never will be.

Received casually from email and web site browsing - they are
absolutely not a problem right now.

People hacking into your machine via the network don't seem
to be a problem if you take moderate precautions - but Linux
machines have been taken over by the bad guys and web sites
have been mutilated and such.  The frequency is low though.

I've been using Linux since the very beginning (heck - I used
Minix too) - and I've had a Linux PC on the net 24/7 without
a hardware firewall (ie acting as it's own firewall) for eight
years. It's been running my website (and now my Wiki) without
me taking any special precautions beyond telling SuSE "this
computer runs a website", I open email attachments without a
care and browse random websites without concern with Java and
JavaScript enabled and I have NEVER, EVER had a moment's problem
from viruses or worms or had my web site hacked or anything
like that.  I would imagine every other Linux user has a similar
experience.

Will they ever be a problem in the future?  Maybe.

The *theoretical* level of protection isn't that great (although
vastly better than Windows) and I suspect that Linux is currently
unaffected by these things mostly because it's too obscure for
the evil idiots out there to care about.  When security loopholes
are reported in Linux software, they are generally fixed in
hours - so if you care enough to keep up to date, you'll be
safer than under Windows - personally, I don't bother.

Also, there is a case for 'genetic diversity'.  At any one time
there are maybe three or four common versions of Windows out
there for people to hack - with Linux there are hundreds of
distributions, lots of different email systems, many, many
kernel revisions.  This makes it much harder for backdoors
that are exploitable in one Linux system to spread to another.

The very small number of Linux users would also help limit the
spread of any email virus that did happen to come along (not
that they do) - if a Windows virus ships itself out to everyone
in the victims address book - it'll find that 95% of the machines
it tries to spread to are running Windows - and it'll spread like
wildfire.  If that could possibly ever happen on a Linux machine,
only a few percent of the addresses would also be Linux machines
so the rate of growth of a virus would be dramatically slower -
giving more time for the news to get out there.

But whatever the reasons - and whatever the future holds - right
now you are pretty much 100% safe from those kinds of malware
under Linux.  Now - if only Spam and Phishing attacks were as
easy to deal with!