Text 12918, 100 rader
Skriven 2009-07-12 18:59:02 av Ross Cassell (1:123/456)
  Kommentar till text 12917 av Ed Hulett (1:123/789.0)
Ärende: Food For Thought
========================
Hello Ed!

12 Jul 09 18:41, you wrote to me:

 RC>> Last fall, I fell over laughing when we got our updated software
 RC>> assortment, in it was a version of Norton Antivirus 2009 for the
 RC>> *MAC*.

 RC>> Seems the folks at Symantec felt that the nix/BSD Based Apple OS
 RC>> had gathered enough market share to attract the attention of the
 RC>> malware authors..

 EH> Now, that is a laugh.

Well from Symantecs perspective, it would have to be something that guarantees
a good return on their investment. But since going to the Intel platform, Mac
has picked up market share, which in turn means more targets worth the while of
the malware authors.

 EH> There's anti-virus software out there for Linux. Most of it is open
 EH> source.

Yes, I am aware of the Fprot and clamav offerings.

We have a File distribution setup within Fidonet, and I had clamav flag a file
as being infected when the area coordinator sent out an alert.

 EH> There are currently only about 200 virus/malware that effect Linux,
 EH> but none in the wild. They are all proof of concept.

Since most of the malware today is geared towards the authors making money,
there just isnt enough Linux Boxes out there to make it worth their time when
contrasted to Windows..

Linux, even with the great inroads Ubuntu has made, is not a operating system
friendly enough for newbies (lets not look at it from our eyes) and when a
newbie goes to buy a computer, guess what they get..

I deal with the public and most of them think point and click is all you need
and none of them have vaccinated themselves from social engineering tricks.

Alot of what plagues Windows, is the device sitting in between the keyboard and
chair.

When we sell computers, we offer services to optimize them, remove the
trialcrap and put AV software on it. Sold a laptop to a guy, performed the
service and sent him on his way. Three days later he was back, with a Rogue
Security Software application on his system. He was bitching up a storm, until
I checked the logs of the AV software we put on and discovered that he allowed
it in when the AV software warned him.

Of course you have other people whom surf to a website:

* See a Banner ad that says, "you are our 1 millionth visitor and won a laptop,
click here to claim your prize"

or

* They are surfing porn or trying to view movies or other videos and are told
  they must download a special video player or codec.

Guess what they got..

 RC>> Being vulnerable to malware attack is about how big a target one
 RC>> is, Linux isnt impervious to attacks, it just has a real skinny
 RC>> radar cross-section.

 RC>> Security through obscurity.

 EH> You also have to look at how quickly security upgrades are made
 EH> available for *nix compared to M$. The open-source community is much
 EH> more robust at reacting to security threats as opposed to M$.

But the problem with open source in this area is that the source code is
available to others to see where the weaknesses might be or to see what was
done to correct an earlier weakness. But like I said, it will take a bigger
gain in market share for Linux to be a big enough target for todays crop of
malware authors.

 EH> One other thing is the philosophy and architecture of Linux verses M$.
 EH> With *nix for malware to do anything the user has to be stupid enough
 EH> to give it root access.

Just keep it patched and use strong passwords..

My younger sister got herself infected with a Rogue App, I took her system and
did a destructive system restore and passworded the Admin acct, created a
limited privileged account for her to use and set the machine to auto login to
that acct. Its not foolproof, but if more newbies had their machines done this
way, less agravation for them.

==
Ross
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