topic Re: Anti virus in Operating System - Linux

Anti virus

PVR — Mon, 16 Feb 2004 00:44:18 GMT

Hi Guys,

I want to know whether linux is prone to virus attacks or not.

thanx

Re: Anti virus

Steven E. Protter — Mon, 16 Feb 2004 01:04:14 GMT

It really is not prone to any attacks.

Simple scripts can be made that will fill the hard disk or try and attack security, but most of the time of virus writers has been spent working on Windows.

There actually is a virus checker for Linux Open Source, here is a link to a thread I started on this subject a year ago.

http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=77096

There is also a recent thread on the topic if you push down a few pages.

SEP

Re: Anti virus

Mark Grant — Mon, 16 Feb 2004 01:54:32 GMT

Linux IS prone to virii (is that the plural of virus). However, it is so difficult for a virus to actually cause much damage that it isn't very attractive to would be crackers.

It is difficult to get a virus to replicate itself on a unix system. e-mail virii threat can be completely eliminated if you're prepared to do a little set up. Users tend not to have access to system files etc etc etc.

There have been worm attacks which have used vulnerabilities in certain applications.

There was a virus written for linux once that escaped the authors systems. It installed intself in /tmp but actually required you to log in as "root" and specifically run it in order to propogate.

Re: Anti virus

Martin P.J. Zinser — Mon, 16 Feb 2004 11:54:41 GMT

Linux is not as likely to be attacked by a Virus as Windows for a number of reasons:

1.) There are so many more windows systems out there than Linux systems that it is simply more attractive to write a Windows virus.

2.) Many (esp. private) systems are run by users with full admin privs turned on, making it easy for a virus to propagate

Having said that, there is nothing inhereent in Linux that makes it impossible to write a virus. The first step in securing a system is to make sure that no processes execute under root that do not need to (e.g. database servers, webservers etc.).

Also keep in mind that if you serve disks to Windows users via Samba you might want to run a virus scanner even if the virus does not effect your server, but "only" the connecting clients (We do this e.g. on our OpenVMS servers where you can essentially the same question ;-)

Greetings, Martin