Re: Viruses

Paul Allen <"paul dot l dot allen at comcast dot net"> wrote:
Eric Schreiber wrote:
Floyd Davidson wrote:

Linux is not immune to viruses.

Bull***.
Several points awarded for the enthusiastic, knee-jerk Linux
enthusiast
reply. None awarded for critical thinking.

Yup. Floyd's basically correct, but his single-word response
did not explain why he's right.

And if that single word had not had an entire article filled
with support, it would have been invalid.

But it was valid.

The more people who use Linux, the more common Linux attacks
will become.

Wrong. The mechanism simply is not effective with Linux.
The most succesful mechanism is people who don't take, or even
understand, basic precautions. While Linux users do tend to be more
technically savvy than Windows users (they have to be, after all), I
assure you that there are idiots even among Linux geeks.

Sorry, but this is wrong. The most successful virus propagation
mechanism is an OS that propagates viruses by design. If the OS
is resistant to the particular threat posed by viruses, the user
doesn't have to think much about "basic precautions" the way a
Windows user does. People will probably always be a weak link.
That's why the OS should be able to take care of itself.

....

Nope. What's happening is that you're exposing your ignorance of
the different types of possible attacks. A virus is a bit of code
that attaches itself to a program, loosely speaking. It needs
help to propagate, and this help is not readily available on a
Unix system. A Windows virus can count on the presence of Outlook
and IE to help it propagate.

Floyd was probably thinking about worms, which are network-based

I think the existence of various "root kits" is the biggest
vulnerability of Unix based systems. Of course while they do
exist and do work, each one has to be *manually* inserted, one
machine at a time. They are effective as an attack on a single
machine, but are a very inefficient way to attack the Internet.

....

The business case is compelling. The rest will follow in good time.
Microsoft will eventually be left in the corner to gnaw the ends of
its old plots.

Exactly! And that is a fact that people don't realize, either
in its existence or the effect it will have on them. The fact
that it is indeed about to happen is evident too. Microsoft is
now openly stating that Linux is the biggest threat to their
empire. They are fighting it tooth and nail, mostly with FUD.

For anyone who was watching the Internet as it burst onto the
scene in the early 90's, there are many examples to show how to
judge timeline development. One of the best examples was the
way the tree based publishing industry fought the idea of The
Internet, and up through the mid-90's was printing articles
right and left about the horrors posed by the Internet. But the
*facts* are that companies which did not catch on and quickly
integrate computer networking into their business plan all
failed and either ceased to exist or were taken over by
management that did understand. (Just try to find a newspaper
that doesn't use computer networking today!)

Hence, the FUD hits a peak just before the mass movement towards
a new methodology. And in fact the FUD against Linux is peaking
out right now!

Guess what's next?

--
Floyd L. Davidson http://www.apaflo.com/floyd_davidson
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska) floyd@xxxxxxxxxx
.

Quantcast