Quote:
Originally posted by mufy
As far as my knowledge goes, there are no known viruses for linux. So, rest assured. You don't have to worry about having/not having an anti virus installed.
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There are several viruses out there for Linux; most of which are quite benign or proof-of-concept. Search google for “Linux virus” for details.
Linux has several intrinsic defences against viruses; email attachments cannot run themselves automatically when the email is opened, a file must deliberately be marked as executable before it can be run, for example. Furthermore, it's very rare for an untrusted executable to be run as root, so it only has local user permissions, and can't mess up your system (even if it can get at your data; a regular user typically has write access to no more then four or five executable files, which rather stops viruses from spreading too far).
However, I would definitely install something like ClamAV if you're either running an email server for Windows users, or serving up any type of executable files on a web or FTP server. I shouldn't worry about your server becoming infected; being rooted is a much more serious problem. (Look for chrootkit; you should download and run it occasionally).