Fred Ma wrote:
After some surfing, I haven't found any evidence of malware targetting cygwin. I'm considering excluding the massive file tree from scans (AV, SpyBot, AdAware). I'd be interested in more experienced opinions about this. Thanks.
Larry Hall:
Any such reports on this list in the past have later been shown to be problems with the software that claims to have found a fault in Cygwin. Such is the reasoning behind the following FAQ: <http://cygwin.com/faq/faq-nochunks.html#faq.setup.virus> There has actually been more evidence to support that virus scanners, firewalls, and spyware detection programs *cause* Cygwin problems by interfering with its proper operation. You can see such reports and the subsequent resolutions (un-install faulty security software) in the email archives.
I haven't had any problems in that regard (malware scanners interfering with cygwin or having false positives), though I don't doubt that it has happened before. I was more wondering about the wisdom of taking the plunge and excluding the cygwin directory tree from future scans based on the past track record of not being targeted. -- Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/
