On Fri, 20 Sep 2002, dipankar das wrote:
> Now, why this difference? And how? Why Linux is not vulnerable to virus or > worm or anything, the way all MS systems are, systems that I have lived with > all these years? Linux is vulnerable to viruses and worms. In fact, there is a worm moving around the net right now that attacks a software bug in openssl which is used on many Apache installations. The difference is, the worms are attacks against software bugs and not design flaws, and are considerably less in number. Where the number of known Linux viruses are less than 10, there are tends-of-thousands of discovered viruses for Microsoft OS's and applications. A few good reasons why we are much more immune: a) Linux is a multi-user system. This means that any code that runs on your system can only damage files that are modifiable by that user. The operating system itself is installed as 'root' and regular users can't mess up the OS. If a user runs their computer as root, or a bug in a piece of software that is running as root gets comprimised, then this advantage is lost. b) With access to the source code, obvious security problems and design flaws can be dealt with earlier in the development and popularization of a piece of software. This is the fundamentals of scientific public peer review that has allowed most of the critical advancements of science and the arts. The claims of "security by obscurity" are simply bogus marketing attempts by "software manufacturing" and are ideas that are opposed by hundreds-upon-hundreds of years of peer-reviewed science, cryptographic research, etc. c) Linux users and developer tend to be more computer literate than Microsoft users *evil grins* This means they are more likely to operate their equipment safely, and not do stupid things like "run random programs received from the net". The growing popularity of Linux may change this ;-) d) With Microsoft still around and popular, and the design and implementation flaws of software such as Microsoft Office (macros, Outlook) trivially exploitable, it isn't worth doing the extra work that would be required to attack alternative software. This too will become less of an advantage as more people bail on Microsoft and move to Linux. --- Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.ca/> See http://weblog.flora.ca/ for announcements, activities, and opinions Submission to Innovation Strategy | No2Violence in Politics http://www.flora.ca/innovation-2002.shtml | http://www.no-dot.ca/ -- To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the body "unsubscribe ilug-cal" and an empty subject line. FAQ: http://www.ilug-cal.org/help/faq_list.html
