well i was being facetious, but windoze is on 85% of all home desktops.

This is a good point. As far as viruses go, I feel it is the big companies like symantec, TrendMicro and Micro$oft that PAY people to do thier bidding for them and make these viruses - just so that they can realease YET another patch, and charge as though air is made of gold-dust!!

Aside from this,
The worlds biggest virus is Windows.
The world biggest Weapon of Mass destruction is Windows.
This make Bill Gates Guilty of terrorism, and biological warfare!

The problem with Linux viruses, while there have been proof-of-concept viruses made, the problem with them is they don't tell you what they do, how big they are, and what they require.

If you release a linux virus that is, say, 1M, and required some off the wall lib, its kind of pointless.

AV for Linux I think Linux will take care of itself. I won't trust Symantac or most companies with my systems security, since an AV program would HAVE to run as root, which is a security risk in itself (I'll trust OSS over some big-name corp who likes making things for Windows. That has bad things written on it).

Another problem is that they won't tell us just how complex these viruses are. If they require a keylogger, a program to read the stdout to find when the user is inputting the root password, then finding the files, devices, and whatnot to make changes will be (I'm betting) out of the reach of most of the script kiddie out there who make most of the viruses.

It would take a good programmer with some skill to make a Linux virus, in which case most corps would have a hell of a time countering it, simply because they could also hack their software so it won't read the file as a virus.

You are right, it would take someone with imense skill to creat a avirus for Linux. But with the whole linux development cycle going on, what with the kernel, built in packages, and so on and forth, wouldnt the supposed virus be countered by itself anyway??
For example, someone "releases" a virus specifically for kernel 2.6.11.1. By the time they have gone through thier "testing" to ensure that it creates the amoun of havoc and destruction that is desired, the next kernel release would be out - thwarting the writers attempt at world descimation.

While this is true for a lot of options, there are some out there that will allow a "limited" user to run a scan. Anything that does not scan the registry (sorry, introducing windows to this discussion, but is relevant to the point) and a few other "locked down" area of a pc are pretty much fair game for AV scans.
Besides - If a virus is introduced to a system via a "limited" user, the virus, theoretically would not have access to the registry anyway. This is unless, of course the virus resides in memory until the next time the root/administrator account is logged in.

Well, I would have to make one point: A virus doesn't have to have kernel access. It just needs to be able to mess with some code.

Problem would be write permissions for the files, which would be the headache that I can see.

Hmm, problem with your thoughts is that, while it would work, a Virus scanner that cann't solve the problem is kind of useless, and having to run it as root could cause problems. It would be a hassle, but could be done.



The thing that would make viruses hard to make outside of what I stated before, is that once one is released, chances are instead of just removing it, they would fill in the security gaps that let it in, and hence each virus that came afterwards would need to be sneakier, or would die when it hit the port and firewall.

I think the "best" way for a virus to get in would to be disguised as a .deb package that get's downloaded by the user on purpose (think freshmeat, sourceforge), but to get a user to think that he needs the program is...
I'm talking in circles, need some coffee...

...<- Gentoo user


HA! I am virus-proof!!!!!111!!!11!!!111eleventyone!!!!11111!!1

I really wonder which percentaje of the linux user base could be affected by such package (I'm guessing that could be some serious majority)
At least that wouldn't work on me nor Dralnu
Check this link out, it's some kind of analysis (more like a rant) of the how's and why's linux can't have a virus like the ones that make oblivion on windoze systems, a friend of mine pointed me out this page the other day and I just remembered it

Windows Viruses-take out millions of systems
Linux Viruses-cured the old fasioned-way within hours.


Thats too funny.


Personally, I want to see the source for these viruses (and make a chroot enviroment to run them in), just to see what they would be capable of. Might be interesting to see.

I checked out that link, raska.
Good reading thus far (I havent read it in its entirety yet)
One thing I did manage to pick up is that unless the root account got the "baddie" program, then theres really no point as to trying to make a virus for Linux.

The other thing to note about viruses is that they generally tend to go for COMMON system flaws - i.e common firewall holes etc etc, and also common flaws contained within certain applications (liks Outlook express for example)
Linux is unique in that you can customize it beyond recognition (windows is similar, but not to the same extent) PLUS the whole idea behind being "open source" is that everyone can colaborate on a project or customise it to thier own needs. Ones system configuration is not going to be the same as another's (or is it??!!!)
what this means is that no two systems are alike, which does not allow for viruses to get in and attack "common" elements

I'm going to disagree on one point here: With systems like RHEL, SuSe, and some of the other distros that handle the configs automatically, the configuration is pretty much standard.

But when you get into like Gentoo and Debian, yeah, no two systems are alike.

Hello!

Although viruses can hardly live in a Linux environment, I still don't see how the average Linux user is more or less immune to malware and other threats. The user can inadvertantly run a Javascript or Java off the web, which unbeknowest to him edits the bashrc file to run malicious code whenever he logs in. True, the overall system will work, but whenever he logs in the program will immediately run and may leak private information from his files or do other kind of damage to them.

(Disclaimer: I'm an avid Linux fan just working out a worse case scenrio)

Murdock

Point taken, although I think this can be figured as security issues.

Re-writing part of the .bashrc file won't affect everyone (csh, ksh, zsh).

Mass-viruses in Linux are, to say the least, difficult to do. While that is a viable problem, that can easily be remadied by a 2nd file that is sourced by your .bashrc, make the .bashrc a read-only file, and that would just confuse alot of virus-attempts via that file (to add more to this, you could change the owner of the 2nd file to a root-jail-type user, and modify it with them via sudo vim/emacs, and you've solved the problem pretty much permanently).

Previously, price has not been an advantage to using linux- as windows comes with almost every computer at no additional charge. However, with these "6 versions" of windows, things will change.

Microsoft is going to start using "license upgrades" for vista. Obviously, this means that hw vendors will ship their computers with "basic", and you will have to pay hundreds of dollars to upgrade.

This new money making scheme from microsoft will almost certinally drive windows powerusers to linux.

Prices:
Vista Ultimate: $400
Vista Home Premium: $240
Vista Home Basic: $200

Upgrade Prices:
Vista Ultimate: $260
Vista Home Premium: $150
Vista Home Basic: $100

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows...ns_and_pricing)

That is crazy, for the price of the fully featured version of windows, I could buy a new p.c. that would run linux twice as fast!

well said! i'm adding that to my sig

On the whole I really do not think that Vista will be worth upgrading to/for.
If all this talk about hardware prices going down is true, then it would be worth upgarding the hardware, even if you did not install Vista. Its always worht upgarding hardware! nature of the beast, wanting something more.

Who cares about pricing?? Who in thier right mind buys windows in any case??
(I only have it(xp) on my machine coz I scored a select version of windows xp in lieu of payment for some work experience i did with a system admin!! Fully legal version, no registering req'd and fully compatible with service packs!)

Hey, pengu, I hope I get some sort of recognition for that addition to your signature!