[ubuntu-za] Karma vs Windows 7

[Gavin]

2009/10/26 Jonathan Carter (highvoltage) <jonathan at ubuntu.com>:
> Gavin wrote:
>> Viruses have existed since the early days of the computer, on all
>> sorts of operating systems. They will continue to evolve, mutate and
>> mature as they have proven to do so very well, and as Linux becomes
>> more widely used and more popular, I can assure you that things may
>> not be as peachy as they are now.
>
> That's a very common misconception, I'm sure if you would actually list
> your reasons for being so sure of that statement I would be able to
> disprove it with hard facts quite effortlessly.
>
> What kind of fault on a Linux system could possibly make a virus
> unstoppable? I don't believe anyone has been able to figure that out
> yet, if you have then I'd certainly want to hear about it.

No virus is unstoppable, some do become viral and spread like
wild-fire, Windows users know all about that, but eventually they can
be stopped, but yes I do agree that the Linux OS is far more protected
from that sort of threat by design.

Viruses are however just the tip of the iceberg of a an ever
increasing range of threats targeting all operating systems, XSS,
Phishing, DoS, SQL Injection, etc. Linux boxes get hacked all the
time, they get infected by rootkits, command scripts, backdoors, etc.
It's also been recently discovered that hackers are using compromised
Linux boxes to control their huge botnets of infected windows pc's.

The reality of the situation is that the security threat is real and
it is ever increasing at a rapid rate, just ask any security
specialist that you know and they'll agree.

My point was to just highlight that it would be ignorant to promote a
false sense of security by saying that Ubuntu users are immune to all
viruses/spyware because then they will think that nothing can go wrong
and they are 'totally' safe with their trusty and impenetrable OS.