On Thursday 06 February 2003 11:53 pm, Vaessen, E.M.J. (Ed) wrote: > A few weeks ago I had a memory module, a 512MB DDR-333MHz (from Seitec?), > replaced because it gave troubles to the GA-7VRXP mother board I had then. > Memory was replaced by a new SIMM. As later the motherboard also had > started to forget how to connect to a PS/2 mouse, I had it replaced by a > GA-7VAXP. History repeats and once again, after one or two weeks of use, > the memory check indicates errors in the memory module. Also I can't > install MDK9.0 anymore. > > Before I go back the the local electronics shop where I had my PC compiled > and shoot the whole gang there to pieces, I would like to know if anyone > has ever heard of computer virusses that are able to damage electronics in > a PC. I say this because I tend to connect to internet a lot (from my > single desktop machine) using ADSL and the MDK9.0 is installed with > security "high", but what kind of protection this gives I don't know. > > When I make a new installation of MDK9.0, I want to use PortsEntry as an > additional tool to protect my machine. I furthermore would like to apply > LIDS, but this would force me to use the normal (vanilla?) 2.4.19 or 2.4.20 > sources and compile the kernel and I don't know how that goes together with > the Mandrake rpm's on my installation discs. > > Ed Vaessen > > Disclaimer
As a general principle, viruses don't propagate on a linux system unless you connect as root. A few exploits exist to put in trojan worms, but if you stay updated you can avoid those. Portsentry is an intrusion detector which could be well enhanced by iptables. There are soe good, stateful firewalls out there based on iptables, and I favor some of the ones on websites posted as a set of iptables rules over shorewall. No there are no viruses that can damage electronics. lm_sensors will smoke IBM 600, 770 and A2x series IBM notebooks to the point of a factory return for a new motherboard, but that should be a concern only if you are using some other distro cause lm_sensors is never loaded by default in Mandrake. (the damage is to firmware on the board which the board does not have the ability to flash in any sane way--overwriting drivers for the I2C bus). Civileme
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