A virus or two

[Mark]

On Fri, Nov 19, 2010 at 10:56 AM, Doug Robinson <dkrr at telus.net> wrote:
> Hello
>    While browsing at the local electronic toy store the topic of
> Linux arose. The man claimed that his linux system has had two viruses
> find their way into his system in the last year.
>
>    I have not heard much about nor experienced any such attacks on any of
> my linux systems .
>
>    What is the current state of the virus problem on the generic linux
> system and
> should I become concerned enough to actually do something?
>
You may not like this, but in this case Google really is your friend.

Last time I looked, maybe a month or two ago, there were a grand total
of 42 viruses (malware, actually) on Linux/UNIX systems, as compared
to hundreds (1000s?) on the MAC and millions for Windows.

They tend to be different kinds of animals, though.  Windows malware
generally takes advantage of the fact that most Windows users are
their own system administrators, so anything they do has grave
consequences.  This is generally much harder on UNIX/Linux systems
where most users never run as the administrator, so the whole nature
of malware attacks has to be done from a different angle of attack,
and careful users are less likely to fall into those traps.

That said, any time you do an update or install new software, chances
are you're doing it as the root (or sudo) and are vulnerable at that
point more than others.