Antivirus

[Mike McMullin]

On Thu, 2007-09-20 at 06:12 -0400, Andrew Zajac wrote:
> On 9/20/07, Gunawan <jgun98.milis at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi,
> > Do we need antivirus software for our ubuntu system?
> > I heard that there is no virus on linux.
> 
> No.  Viruses are not a threat to Gnu/Linux.
> 
> The software is source-based.  That means that such vulnerabilities
> are fixed, not just scanned and avoided.  Windows is binary-compatible
> which means that if they actually fixed the vulnerability, something
> would break and some other software would stop working.

  This is not quite correct.  The idea of open source is double edged,
vulnerabilities are exposed to those who would readily exploit them, and
also tho those who would readily fix them.  Virii for Linux exist, as
proof of concept, but have not yet been found running in the wild.  The
security model that Linux (and Unix) has long imposed means that your
normal user account could only allow damage to things to which it has
write access, and that rarely includes scripts and executable.

> Just keep up-to-date with software updates.   That's the only thing
> you need to do to keep safe.

  Updated software is always a good idea, as many updates are security
related, however you need to add to that, only using root access
whenever it is actually necessary.