Viruses and Spyware

barneyt · 09-21-2005, 03:34 PM

My question is really simple:

Has anyone on this forum who runs Linux (and that must be almost everyone) ever had any sort of virus, trojans, spyware, ad-ware, or other malware of any kind?

Polling other Linux forums, I have found no one who has been infected, ever......... just wanted to see if it held true here too!

TIA

Barney

p.s.: I've used Linux for years and have not had any problems with this at all.......

Komakino · 09-21-2005, 03:41 PM

Nope. Been on linux for...lemme see....5 years? 2 years as my only OS and in that time I've never had an issue. Though from looking at my /var/log/messages file it looks like someone has tried to hack me once or twice. And failed

XavierP · 09-21-2005, 04:05 PM

Currently, ther is no spyware or adware for Linux, and the only viruses are the 'proof of concept' ones. Really, the only way that viruses could seriously affect us is if we all ran as root all the time.

Komakino · 09-21-2005, 05:44 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by XavierP
Currently, ther is no spyware or adware for Linux, and the only viruses are the 'proof of concept' ones. Really, the only way that viruses could seriously affect us is if we all ran as root all the time.

Which of course we don't do...

..do we, newbies (and of course Linspire users)?

xpression · 09-21-2005, 06:37 PM

i dont understand, if we were infected with a virus then how would linux notify you, its not like in windows where you have a AV that scans for viruses!!!!

aysiu · 09-21-2005, 07:02 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by xpression
i dont understand, if we were infected with a virus then how would linux notify you, its not like in windows where you have a AV that scans for viruses!!!!

Actually, there's a program called clamav that does scan for viruses, but if your computer is up and running fine for years, it probably doesn't have a virus on it, and if you're not running as root, all your virus can do is destroy your /home folder.

tkedwards · 09-21-2005, 11:06 PM

Quote:

if we were infected with a virus then how would linux notify you, its not like in windows where you have a AV that scans for viruses!!!!

Antivirus programs are really a band-aid solution, although they might become necessary on Linux one day if a lot of users get tricked into running malicious programs (ie. 'download this screensaver'). Anyway for now its virtually impossible to get infected with a virus in Linux - they require to be manually downloaded and run manually and there are none that are actually spreading around, ie non that are 'virulent'.

As for getting a virus in Windows how do you know? Often the first thing viruses do is disable your antivirus software, not to mention if its a new virus that you don't have definitions for. You only really know that your machine's become infected if you notice it behaving weirdly because if the AV software could detect the virus to tell you that you were infected it would have removed it.