> perhaps that's because there aren't any successful linux viruses in the wild? > even when linux owns a good % of the desktop market, linux viruses will be far > fewer than on window as long as we take care with the software we run. > viruses are not an unfortunate reality of computing anymore than your OS > crashing daily is.
There have been a few that have made the rounds. That WILL eventually get more common. The unfortunate thing is that even though stupid little Macro viruses aren't, and won't be common, other viruses will be. Unfortunate, because they'll be much more damaging. Windows might be vulnerable to 250 viruses a year (in the wild) vs maybe 5 for Linux. But I'd bet that half of the Linux, and probably less than 10 Windows viruses actually do damage beyond flooding a server (usually a mail server). Personally, I'm waiting for someone to come up with an interesting virus again. Don't get me wrong, I'm no fan of viruses, or 'authors' but if I need to hear about a virus, I'd rather hear about something like CIH than I_Love_You. Nimda has been the most interesting in a long time, simply because it attacked on so many fronts. It's about time that someone invented a virus that sat dormant until you accessed a banking site, or a stock trading site, and THEN did it's dirty work. Maybe it just increases the number of items ordered when it sees you making a purchase on an online purchasing system or something. I don't know. Just something more than "this viruses will altomatically send copies of itself to everyone in your addressbook." If some idiot wants to wreak my day, they could at least be courteous enough to make it interesting... Send copies of all messages containing the word "love" to everyone in the person's addressbook with the same last name as the PC's owner. (So that if someone is cheating on their spouse, the other person finds out, and gets a record of it all. As do their parents, and siblings, etc.) Maybe send a copy of the person's ICQ/MSNIM/AOLIM/YahooIM/etc records to their spouses. Whatever, I'd be laughing at least. Kev.
