There is a long standing notion that Unix is immune to virii, which i think we all know is BS. I think it's a combination of unix users being just a little too smart to fall for the traditional virus infection tricks, and the virus writers being just a little too dumb to write a good unix virus.
Most virii/worms have two objectives: destroy data, and propagate. I don't need root on your system to do that. Who cares if i wipe out /usr/bin or /lib? You can get that off the cd. But when i destroy ~/mp3, ~/docs, and ~/pix, then you are gonna be pissed. Windows users don't care about reinstalling the OS after a virus infection, they want to know if their irreplaceable data is still there. I can zip through your pine, mozilla, and kmail address books and propagate just as easily (probably easier) as going through the Outlook address book. $HOME is arguably the most important directory on your linux desktop system. It is to me, anyway. When we get a lot more mom and pop Unix desktop users out there, and virus writers start seriously targeting them, i think we could have a major unix virus problem on our hands. -Ray -- =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Ray DeJean http://www.r-a-y.org Systems Engineer Southeastern Louisiana University IBM Certified Specialist AIX Administration, AIX Support =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= On Thu, 4 Jul 2002, john beamon wrote: > The Unix user base is anything but small. Most of the doctor's offices > and small hospitals in this area run SCO; the biggest one runs AIX with > PC's connected to it. Every interent account at EATEL or NTG is a Unix > user account. I know one would think that POP and personal web space > doesn't make one a "user", but that's the word the system uses when you > add them. Of the millions of Linux desktop users out there, there are > precious few who've ever been wormed by Lion or that thing ZDNet keeps > saying jumps back and forth between Linux and Windows. What a load. > People who run Linux all day logged in as root like that shoot themselves > in the foot. That goes back to my suggestion that Windows really ought to > have users work in a "My Sandbox" and prompt them for an Admin password > when anything tries to make system changes. Unix doesn't have viruses > because-and-when people don't run it as root. The famous sendmail worm of > so many years ago hit sendmail because it runs as root, case in point. > It's impossible for anything in my Linux email to infect a system binary, > period. I could lose $HOME, but that's about it. > >
