Linux security

[Daniel Carrera]

Lorin B Pino wrote:
> The problem with deployment of viruses in linux would be the same 
> problem as is being discussed with hardware drivers.  How many kernels 
> are in use now?

A virus doesn't need kernel hooks. It's just a program. Just like you 
don't need different versions of Firefox for every kernel.

> How does each distro perform certain tasks?

I'm not aware of any task that is relevant to a virus that varies with 
distros. 'rm -rf ~/*' will work on all distros. chmod will be the same, 
Perl will be the same, etc.

> Some 
> distros structure things quite differently from each other.

They all put the user's home in "~/".

> Autopackage is trying to set up an installer that 
> will work on any distro,

Autopackage is doing very different things from what a virus would try 
to do. Autopackage is trying to be a package manager that works on all 
distros without a package manager. That's a much more complex problem 
than a virus.

Case in point: You can get Firefox, OpenOffice and many other programs 
in binary form and have them run on all distros. And these programs are 
far more complex than any virus.

I'm sorry, but the differences between distros will not prevent a virus 
from working any more than they prever Firefox from working accross distros.

Cheers,
Daniel.
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