viri
 

Just something I was wondering about, are viruses very common on linux machines?

with winXP catching new ones everyday, its just I would have thought that open sources would make it easier for virus programmers to find exploits. Or have I missed something here, because Ive never actually heard of anyone running linux get a virus.

hmmmm..

ric

Yes you did miss something there. Open source means that anyone can patch the hole up. And they do. Open source means tha security holes are faster discovered and patched. The other thing with viruses is the diversity of linux distributions. As some programs don't work on all distributions without proper midifications, how do you expect viruses to work on every machine. Thus virus makers(who ever they are and why they do it I don't know) would have to be damn good to make a virus that would spread so quickly through Linux than it does through windows(because windows are all the same). One other thing I saw at www.f-prot.com is that W32 viruses are as many as you want. And UNIX viruses are only 2 recorded by F-prot and that the las one was recorded 2 years ago. Most viruses are made executables (exe files). You can't run an exe file on Linux unless you want to. But don't be fooled into thinking that you can't get a virus. It just can't harm you.

There are a large number of threads asking this very question. Do a Search of LQ and you will find explanations of Linux viruses, what you can do and why we are less at risk.

biggest viral problem I have is that they always try to take up space in my inbox and that I regularely have to update my postfix's body_checks to keep the w32 flavour of the month from exploding my inbox.

Perhaps I should stop having windows users for friends? ;-)