Hi all,

Sorry if my signup name (mattjohnstone22) appears here a lot... it isn't just me, it's basically a number of us from uni who have all moved to linux... I'm the sucker posting!

Basically, as far as I'm aware Linux is very secure from virus' and spyware etc...

But question we have is: what about using such applications as LimeWire and Azureus on linux? Do these pose threats? On XP all sorts of crap was mentioned for using them (although, to be fair, nothing ever happened - maybe because of spybot etc?)

If so, what software is there to protect against them using linux?

Only distro's being used here are Suse 10.2 and Ubuntu.

Cheers,

matt.

You needn't worry about stuff like this on linux. It is very, very difficult to infect and degrade a linux/unix machine in the way that you would Windows.

You can p2p with abandon, confident that most or all of the malicious code you find there was written for Windows - and will not run in linux. Just to be safe - NEVER run anything you aren't sure of as root. You'll be fine.

Quite frankly, I don't think you need to worry. On another note:
I use Shareaza and/or Shareaza Pro in XP and can get just about anything I want, LimeWire is turning out to be allot like napster who has succumbed to the music industry. In Linux, using LimeWire, I don't get to download half of what I want, the search will pull up lots but no activity, but turn around and boot XP and use Shareaza, I get what I want including latest release in music and tons of apps.

In any event, the results that usually show up first at the top which are around 150kb to 350kb are almost certainly viruses, it helps to know more or less what size the item you are looking for should be and only download something in that range.

Thanks PenguinPwrdBox and Junior Hacker...

I uderstand what you are saying about limewire... it has gone really downhill (including the installation options... which basically read as : i am using this to do anything that is legal, or I ain't lol!)

To be super sure, is there any app that can be run on Linux to scan all files?

Also... If a comp is booted into XP mode and a drive is say FAT32... and something affects that from Windows, and is then accessed from Linux, can problems occur there?

Or vice versa?

Cheers,
matt.

(just edited this bit: By scan all files, all mean from Linux, so that when I boot into Windows a problem will not happen)

Only the MBR would be affected from a Windows type virus to affect Linux. Usually rendering both un-bootable.

I repair allot of virus infected computers that have an expired Norton subscription, it appears people can't justify paying an eighth of the price of a new system for a 2 year subscription for this resource hog that put's 5 or 6 entries in the start-up folder slowing down their Windows box a great deal. After I'm done the re-build I install AVGfree antivirus, it is not as heavy as Norton and has little/no effect on benchmark performance tests compared to Norton as I do test. None of the computers I've installed AVGfree on have come back for virus removal telling me it does a good job (so far).

After you download anything in Windows via shareware you should first right click on the file and select "Scan with Your_anti-virus", before doing anything else.