The computer virus--no cures to be found

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Ignorance...

Yawn... The same old, "MS is only an insecure, virii propogation factory because it is popular." This is TOTALY WRONG. Windows is insecure and virus prone due to its fundemental design. UNIX/Linux is very different in its security and application isolation design. It will make no difference as Linux becomes a main stream desktop OS -- it is far more difficult to infect and propogate virii from it.

Here are the two main ways virii hammer Windows systems:

1) Worms: Entering the Windows system through a port/service that can not be turned off (MSBlaster, Nachi, etc.) --- This would never happen on Linux. You can shut down any and every port. There are no mandatory services running. Additionally, open source server software is typically more secure and less succeptable to buffer-overflows due to the massive number of people who audit the code.

2) Trojans: Executable attachments in email messages. Who was the idiot at Microsoft who thought that auto-executing scripts in email would be a good thing. This has caused so much grief. Even with auto-execution turned off, a user can still double-click and execute an attached file. --- This would never happen in Linux. Linux will not execute files that do not have the executable permission. Just because a file ends with .exe doesn't mean that it is executable as it does in Windows. You must save the file to your hard disk, change its permissions to execute, and then run it. Even then the executable could only effect files owned by that user. It couldn't destroy the whole system (unless you are logged in as root). Impulsive users who double-click every attachment without thinking twice can NOT shoot themselves in the foot with Linux.

If all OS's basically had the same design (and thus the same threat from virii), then why run one over the other? The fact is that all OS's are NOT the same. Linux is fudementally superior in its security design. Virii can not infect it as easily as Windows -- period. The computing world would definately be a better place if everyone were running Linux -- stay tunned as this is rapidly happening.

-Bryan

Posted by: prime21   Posted on: 11/28/03 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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