Security with Linux - Newbie

[Lindsay]

I guess this has to be good news.

On Mon, 2005-02-07 at 17:23 -0800, Liz Young wrote:
> On Sun February 6 2005 11:16 pm, Lindsay wrote:
> > I have been of the understanding that Linux is relatively virus and
> > intruder safe.  How accurate is my understanding of this?
> 
> Seems accurate to me. :-)  In my experience email viruses can't spread 
> the Windows way because (for one reason) attachments can't execute 
> without the user saving the file, and then changing the permissions to 
> executable, and then launching it.  Too much hoop-jumping to get the 
> thing to spread. I'm sure there are exceptions, but in general I think 
> that's why we haven't seen many Linux based email viruses (I haven't 
> seen any).
> 
> As far as being intruder safe, how about this weblog commenting on the 
> Honeynet Project?
> http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/01/linux_security.html
> "Recent data from our honeynet sensor grid reveals that the average life 
> expectancy to compromise for an unpatched Linux system has increased 
> from 72 hours to 3 months."
> 
> So, it appears as if some Linux based distributions  (SuSE and RedHat in 
> that report) are getting more secure "out of the box", even as they 
> gain in popularity.
> 
> -Liz
>