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On Sun, 30 Oct 2011, Grant Sewell wrote:
On Sun, 30 Oct 2011 15:53:32 +0000 Keith Abraham wrote:On 30/10/11 15:34, Martijn Grooten wrote:On Sun, Oct 30, 2011 at 3:18 PM, Neil Winchurst wrote:I am always careful anyway, but I have always thought that such viruses will not run in Linux. Is that true? I do not have any Windows computers at all so I feel safe, but perhaps I shouldn't.In general, you are (a lot) safer using Linux and with a piece of Windows malware you can be all but certain it won't run under Linux. That's mostly because Linux usage is so much smaller than that of Windows; now that Macs have become popular, Mac malware is on the rise too.And because MS OS and OS X are often set up to auto-run downloaded executables. This unusual in Linux. Also Linux has a strict separation between root and user space and consequently if a user ran an executable it would usually only affect the user and not the system as a whole. KeithI have read this kind of statement time and time again. From a "systems administrator" point of view (ie someone who runs a server), this is a non-issue. If the individual's data is trashed it doesn't matter; the users' data should be safely tucked away on a backup, and the "system" can continue to run without any problems.
Sadly not always true.There has been user -> root privilege escalation exploits in the past and I'd be surprised if there weren't any in the future. One of my clients servers was compromised this way and the attacker was able to gain root access. Also note that www.kernel.org was compromised and they still don't appear to know how.
The biggest issue I face on the hosted servers is naive users, or the lazy - "oh, lets just recursively change every thing to 0777 to make wordpresses life easier" sort of thing...
Just google for Linux Rootkits to find more...
However, as Linux is pushing towards the desktop, this idea of safety "the system" is a non-point. If a users' desktop computer ends up running a Linux virus and all their data gets hosed, it is little consolation to say "well, at least the system is still running".
Still running but spewing forth spam, DDoS attacks, etc.Lets not get complacent, but there is a fine-line between making something friendly and usable and making it bolted down so tightly that it'll make end-users with they were running Windows...
Gordon -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq