Manuel Arostegui Ramirez wrote:
On Friday 18 May 2007 09:46:28 Renich Bon Ciric wrote:
Is there any virus known to affect GNU & LInux systems; fedora in
particular?
I've read some article at wikipedia that says that there are a few...
Any known cases yet?
# Article
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_computer_viruses
quoting:
Currently there are under 100 native Linux viruses known but in many
organizations the fact that a Linux viruses exists is enough reason to
install and use Linux antivirus protection on Linux desktops and servers.
Additionaly users of StarOffice and OpenOffice.org have the ability to open
and view Microsoft Office documents that may contain viruses. These viruses
may not infect the Linux computer but the user can easily attach and send
these infected documents unknowingly to someone else and that is a serious
problem.
As system administrators move to Linux files servers they have a real problem
to deal with since the Linux file server can store Windows-based viruses.
Windows-based viruses can write to a Linux/Samba network share as easily as
they can on a Microsoft Windows based network. System administrators must
protect the Linux server from storing these viruses. The only way is through
active antivirus defense on the Linux server itself. Our Vexira Antivirus for
Linux, as an example, detects not only Linux-based viruses but also Windows
and DOS-based as well, I think the current number of malicious or potentially
malicious applications (viruses, trojans, worms, etc...) we detect is above
74,000 now.
I have to add a "me too" to the above answer with the additional
observation. Apart from he general insecurity of MS products one reason
why the assorted malwares have spread so much in the MS environments is
it was so easy to spread the viruses to unsusppecting users with little
or no protection. If the level of protection is kept high in Linux and
other environments most malware writers/spreaders will continue to focus
on they systems they can compromise the easiest.
Shall we offer MS systems as a sacrifice to the malware writers?
