The Ubuntu Experiment

[Leif Gregory]

On Thu, 31 Jul 2008 13:49:21 -0400
"Brian McKee" <brian.mckee at gmail.com> wrote:

> I'd like to point out the big hole this blows in the "I'm smart enough
> about what I do online I don't need AV" argument.  You just don't know
> anymore where 'safe' is - there's no 'safe' place out there.

My question is why not add some security. I mean it's kinda like the
seatbelt thing. Many of us do it without a second thought getting in a
vehicle (even on the passenger side or backseats), then there's the
organ donors who say it's too restrictive or it'll trap them in the
vehicle. Similar organ donors riding motorcycles without protective
gear. New Mexico doesn't have helmet laws. Sorry, getting off the
subject here.

So you install a virus scanner which runs as a cron job at 3am, you
install ad block (which takes some getting used to not seeing ads
littering pages oddly enough), install NoScript, which I'll admit takes
a bit of patience to train, and you configure your firewall. 

Not one of those things magically deletes your net saavy street smarts.
With exception to NoScript and maybe Ad Block (until you get used to
missing ads) none of it is really all that intrusive in your day-to-day
life.

Linux and Mac were bastions of safety for a long time. They're getting
more popular, getting a bigger bullseye painted on it and are getting
more attention (at least Mac) from the bad folks. 

With ever more clever attacks like the recent DNS exploits, Blue Pill
attacks, hardware level attacks etc. Not even Linux is immune. Even
without attacks of those sophistication level, user data is still at
stake. Unfortunately, the majority of computer users (across all
platforms) don't back up their desktops or laptops. Malware in the
userspace can still cause a lot of problems for some people.

Now for this next piece, it's more a question rather than a statement.
Potentially, could malware infect the userspace and sit waiting till
somebody does a sudo and try to tag along on it?

Just something that popped into my head as I was writing this. At any
rate, why not take some precautionary measures. Nobody and nothing is
invulnerable (at least in the context of this discussion).

-- 
Leif Gregory
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