On Wed, 07 Mar 2007 14:36:46 -0700 "Ted Hilts - Thunderbird Acct." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Has antivirus software advanced to the point that the following excerpt > from Debian Administration (dated late 2004) is now invalid? I added > the square brackets and their content. > > "Viruses are a fact of life nowadays, be they real viruses or worms > which require manual intervention on the [be]half of a user to [prevent] > propogate[propogation]. Unix systems tend to be immune from the viruses > themselves, but they still have mail queues full of viral messages." I would say that it's still relevant. Linux/Unix systems are less apt to be propagators - for a virus/worm to work it must gain rights that are in most cases that of privileged users. Still, most viruses/worms (especially the latter) are propogated by emailing the content to others, usually automatically. Since most mailers on Linux/unix are not set up to automatically open *and run* attachments, at least some of the damage is minimized. I still get a few viruses and worms every so often - the "Microsoft Update Patch" is one that's been circulating for years - and it's about 200K. Ouch. If you're on a network, especially if you have a Linux/unix system that does services for Windows machines connected to it, one really should have antivirus toolkits on the Linux machine(s). > had to do was compress the worm infested file and then delete the file. > If I remember right I had my own approach which was to move the infested Wouldn't it be easier to have the antivirus software deliver the file to /dev/null? > Thanks, Ted -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ David E. Fox Thanks for letting me [EMAIL PROTECTED] change magnetic patterns [EMAIL PROTECTED] on your hard disk. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]