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On Sunday 12 January 2003 02:57, Kevin Anderson wrote:
> > 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.
which? i'm unaware of any linux viruses that are or have recently "made the
rounds" ... i know of several worms, but those are quite different and
require different measures to protect one's systems against... of course,
perhaps i've just been lucky and never seen or heard of any of these linux
viruses in the wild...
> That WILL eventually get more common.
what would lead to this occuring? personally, i can see a few reasons this
could occur:
o we start developing software that allows easy and automatic execution of
untrusted code
o we start running everything (or at least more than should be) as root all
the time
these are, though, opposites of the current general trends ..
but simply having more users won't make the UNIX permissions system less
powerful or our email apps to run scripts they receive in their inboxes. nor
will that change the fact that there is diversity amongst linux systems and
that security issues are addressed quickly...
> I_Love_You. Nimda has been the most interesting in a long time, simply
> because it attacked on so many fronts.
i think perhaps we're talking about different issues. i'm talking about
viruses, and you're speaking about worms (and viruses). but they are
completely different animals.
in the case of worms, yes, linux is just as vulnerable as most any other OS
since they primarily capitalize on the ability to elevate
privelege/capabilities through taking advantage of security flaws in
priveleged apps. the solutions there are keeping fewer priveleged apps around
and improving the quality of our programs...
antivirus type software isn't effective in stopping worms, though...
> 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
such animals most assuredly exist. code red (worm, not virus) was an
interesting phantom of the possibilities, and it is not the first. but those
who are both intelligent enough to create such things and have the
motivations to do such things probably really don't care much about you and
me. they are either white hats, or they care about the credit card companies
and the secrets of large companies and governments; their attacks are
focussed on those that bring in real monetary or political rewards and are
all too often successful. i don't think your stock trading or my ICQ logs are
interesting enough for those sorts of "talents" =/
- --
Aaron J. Seigo
GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler"
- Albert Einstein
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