yeah, but if it if it doesn't suck then it still would 'suck' as it wouldn't work, oh well.

lol.........u think about these things too much..................:)

No anti-virus here , just common sense and a hardware-firewall.

True to most polls, my answer is not there to check.
I have the Linux version of F-prot installed to check files I may forward elsewhere.
There are other tools to safeguard your Linux system.

Fun things to say:
"Do you still have a copy of the virus that infected your Windows PC? Would you forward it to me so I can see if my anti virus scanner is working?"

I really don't know all that much about viruses, can someone with a little more of an understanding please inform me?

A) Can a virus cling to an e-mail without being an actual attachment?
B) How hard are they to make? (Not that I'm trying to make one ;))
C) If I had a virus completely and only designed for Windows on a Linux drive, is there any possible way I could infect my system without moving it to a Windows drive or Windows media? (I doubt it, but just making sure)

I can't believe I am the first to answer yes. I'm not particularly worried about virii myself, but I do mail, so my users like that protection. I use ClamAV for mail scanning, and because a little paranoia is a good thing, I do monthly scans of my entire HDD with F-Prot.

Ian

A) Hardly. If it did, it wouldn't execute. You could find a loophole though, I might not know of.

B) What virus are you thinking of? You're like saying, "how hard is it to write a story"? Yours could be a Tolkien, or maybe a children's nursery book, targeted at different things and different systems, or different aspects of them. ;) Its all a matter of which loopholes you find too, or how fast you type. ;) Assembly or HLL? I also created a fake virus once that scared my classmates. It was a javascript alert program really that displayed window boxes of how your computer was being controlled. I also create a fake "control centre" for that to boot. But all it did was really read from and write to a text file using perl. Made quite the prank though. Because by just viewing my HTML page, they thought their computer (in the lab) was infected. :p

I'm kind of amazed when people know Linux programming, how to compile from source and what C++ is. and still can ask how hard is it to create a virus. :p :p :p I think I said too much, but you get the idea.

C) You mean wine? Maybe wipe out data the own user has permissions to, if it know whats to look for, considering such a system may be a bit dynamic. Does the virus know how to look for the users' home directory?

(I also usually like to give my users a different folder from /home/ as well)

But hardly not take over the system. Even when data is deleted, you can easily recover them, unless the virus decides to use the shred option.

Which: shredding takes a long time, will be noticed and can easily be stopped by ctrl-c. Or a kill. Where the process actually responds, and not wait 15 seconds in Windows before it decides to present you with a dialog. ;)

Talk about head in the sand syndrome!

Anyone who doesnt have antivirus installed on their system is spreading it - its that simple! Some of the comments here reflect a complete lack of responsibility to the rest of the internet community. Anyone who claims that there are no Linux viruses dont know what they are talking about! Anyone who doesnt have antivirus and at least a software firewall installed and regularly updated is just one step shy of sending a monthly check to virus programmers around the world - I cant even believe that this kind of question can even come up!

There, I said it - believe what you want, but I cant stress enough that people get their their head out of the sand, take a look around and put up a fence before sticking thier head back in.

Even though I use F-Prot antivirus, I feel that antivirus software is only as good as the current signature files and its heuristic detection routines. If a new virus gets released into the wild there might not be any antivirus protection until the antivirus software venders release new signature files. Also when antivirus software detects a virus - that means that it has already entered the PC(even realtime scanning) and hopefully the PC has not been infected yet. Also viruses can only enter the PC by the network, downloading files, web sites with malicious content, e-mail with malicious content, or removable media. So I follow the following safe guards -

1 - Properly configured Firewall
2 - All TCP/IP Ports closed to the public internet
3 - Properly configured Security
4 - Install only the software you need
5 - Keep all software up to date
6 - Download files from only trusted sources
7 - Know where you surf - use common sense and only allow java & scripts on trusted sites that really need them
8 - E-mail - Only open e-mail from sources you know and then open it as plain text only - do not open any attachments until they can be verified
9 - Scan all removable media for viruses before using
10 - Use chkrootkit, aide, and antivirus software

My PC is a standalone that connects to the internet thru a dial-up and the 10 steps above work for my configuration(but might not work for others). I am never logged on as root when I am on the internet.

Later
Bob

A) I don't really use attachments.

B) My ports are closed.

C) My Linux machine doesn't have loopholes that allow malicious code into your system without even doing anything. Spyware? Nope. It can't write to startup either, because I have good knowledge of my startup scripts.

D) I compile all my code from well-known sources. I hardly download binaries.

E) I never surf the internet as root.

etc. etc.

Therefore I see no need for antivirus software.

Just curious.....how would you know you've never had a virus if you never checked? It's kinda like saying you're not spreading HIV just because you never felt sick.

Symptoms are usually a good teller.

Unless you have a virus that lays dormant for ten years!

What's this?

Please do explain! I would love to hear how a virus that relies on Microsoft's Embedded VB capabilities could possibly spread when Linux email clients cannot and do not run VB script. No, please, enlighten me!I have seen lots of posts here saying stuff along the lines of "if you're running a mail server that will be accessed by Windows machines then you need a virus scanner". Hmmm... how very irresponsible of us!I would have to agree with you. There are Linux virii, however, so far I have seen many posts regarding Linux virii and their very small numbers.Erm, right. So, the fact that it is really quite hard for virii to propogate on Linux machines doesn't come into it? Let's just clear one thing up. A virus is just a programme. Nothing more, nothing less. It is a set of instructions for a computer to execute. With this in mind, the virus programme must be executed in order to propogate. Receiving a virus in Linux does not mean you are infected. Please, let's get the facts right.

thank you! I can just imagine open source virus programers!! ill bet their biggest problem is geting people to do the ./configure, make, make install commands.

but when you think about it, it would be excedingly hard to program a virus for linux, every distro is different, not like the massive amount of identical windows machines. why do you even think ./confgiure exists? because of the variety of linux distros and differences between them. use checksums, relyable mirrors, and common programs and you have nothing to worry about, of course use a firewall, nobody wants random internet users having access to whatever services they are runing, unless theyr a web server or something.

now im not saying that we will never need a virus scanner, as linux gains popularity, the reward for making a linux virus will increase, but as it stands now, theres not enough linux users for people to be making viruses in the quantity that windows has viruses

But now a thought jumped to mind:
What about RPM , TGZ , DEB , etc. ?
These packages take care of that issue.
Would there be a slight chance , their mechanism could be abused for spreading harmfull code?