European rivals turn wary eye on Microsoft

TalkBack 25 of 79:

Next »

« Previous

• Thread View
• Flat View

There are a total of 20 known viruses

[url=http://www.viruslibrary.com/virusinfo/search.htm](Source)[/url] for Linux of those, 7 [url=http://www.viruslibrary.com/virusinfo/Linux.htm](Virus Library)[/url] are in the wild, but all are over 3 years old and their infection vectors sealed off. The newest Linux virus located was in July of 2002.

Now if you go to another source and include worms, trojan horses and rootkits with viruses then the total number jumps to 1,017 according to this [url=http://www.viruslist.com/en/viruslistfind?objs=virus&words=linux](Source)[/url]. But also note that of these only a very small percentage are actual Linux issues, the majority are applications and utilities or scripting language bugs, of which all are corrected with 24-96 hours of being reported. Each source will give you a different number. The second one I cite I believe (need to look closer later) includes Unix viruses as well.

Linux Trojan horse = 350
Linux worms = 150
Linux virus = 211
Linux rootkits = 5
Total = 716

Windows Trojan horse = 977
Windows worms = 1,483
Windows virus = 1,977
Windows rootkits = 27
Total = 4,464

That's a huge difference that equates to a 623% higher probability of getting hit on Windows versus Linux!

Linux is a damn sight more secure and safe than the current offering from Microsoft. For starters all distributions come with a solid firewall that is started from the word go. That has been there for at least 5 years now. All Linux distributions offer several LIDS applications. The SuSE offerings use AppArmor to sandbox applications. That has been available for sometime now (over a year). Since most Linux systems are still built by people with a clue and all newbies are educated about security, the security is pretty tight. Sure there are instances of idiots that ignore the warnings and do stupid things, like run as root. But human ignorance cannot be programmed for 100%.

Every client I set-up with Linux is set-up with the following:
1.training on the proper use and acceptance of e-mail / web browsing.
2.Firewall.
3.NAT router with it's own firewall.
4.AIDE intrusion detection software which performs the same duties as Tripwire but for free and with a few more nice features.
5.all new passwords are validated against John the Ripper for strength. Linux also will perform it's own tests.
6.All passwords expire every 45-90 (180 for home users) days.
7.All passwords are a minimum of 8 characters long.
8.All systems use CLAMAV to ensure that viruses are not accidentally passed along to Windows users.
9.All systems use Spam Assassin as an additional level of spam protection.
10.FAKEBO to send anyone that manages to get through the two firewalls on a wild goose chase.
11.Port Sentry to watch for any activity, again if someone gets through the two firewalls. Port sentry is set up to send an e-mail to me and one other source, detailing which client has been affected.
12.Logcheck is also installed and run by CRON.

And even with all these security measures in place, the user is still able to do their job on their PC without being bothered to validate their OS, annoyed by ?warnings? that someone has attempted to gain entry (generally the NAT firewall stops the intruders at the gate). And without having to utilize run as. The user accounts are locked down so as to prevent local system corruption without the user actively running something as root. Which in the case of business clients, only one other person besides me has the root password. Home users are trained NOT to run as root EVER. But if they want to install or remove software and perform updates, then they are shown the correct way to run the proper tools as the user with the Linux equivalent of Microsoft's run as command.

Bottom line is, it takes a lot effort to infect a Linux system that is being operated by a properly trained user. Most of the vulnerabilities listed in the references, are also local exploits not remote. And in that case if someone has local access to the machine and a little time, game over regardless the system. Since 1999 I have yet to see any successful infections of any of my or my clients Linux systems. In that time I have seen 1 client that was hacked into because they didn't listen to my advice. After that clean up and the expense the client has since learned to follow my advice and has been operating flawlessly for over 3 years now.

As a parting shot here are a couple of other sources you can read up on.

http://www.wildlist.org/WildList/
http://www.securityfocus.com/columnists/188
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_virus
http://mail.limelyte.net/admin/virus/ this is dated but...
http://www.f-secure.com/virus-info/statistics/
http://www.rav.ro/ravmsstats/ - not sure of how current this one is...
http://www.eurokom.ie/servMainSite?inner=virusalerts ? this is a good site...

Posted by: Linux User 147560   Posted on: 09/28/06 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

Alert moderator to an offensive message

Subscribe to this discussion via Email or RSS

SponsoredWhite Papers, Webcasts, and Downloads

• Why Isn't Server Virtualization Saving Us More? A Few Small Changes May Dramatically Increase Your Efficiency VMware Companies have rapidly adopted server virtualization over the past few ... Download Now
• Reducing Server Total Cost of Ownership with VMware Virtualization Software VMware VMware virtualization enables customers to reduce their server TCO and ... Download Now
• The Impact of Virtualization Software on Operating Environments VMware Today's use of virtualization technology allows IT professionals to ... Download Now