On Fri, 2010-04-16 at 19:37 -0700, jdow wrote: > You also said Linux machines were perfectly safe. And I reacted by > saying I don't believe that. Active exploits exist for Linux. Some are > transmitted by email and activated in one of the more or less standard > ways. > > People said MacOS was perfectly safe, too. Once attention turned to > them the exploits started flowing. > > As a little point of interest, why do I see many times as many updates > for Linux come down the pike as compared to Windows? If I turned off > automatic updates how long before I had problems? ---- more attitude and useful information is being exchanged here in general. I would tend to agree that the current trend is malicious web code rather than e-mail borne virus and I presume that is because the various mail servers have gotten fairly effective at blocking them. Clearly no OS is safe from exploit. The most effective security method employed on Linux is simply not to run as superuser where most Windows and Macintosh users are running as superuser and the software leaves it to the user to figure out how to run with less privileges (very possible but not the typical usage). As for the number of updates from Fedora, some are security related fixes and most are not but as you surely realize by now, Fedora packaging allows for updates from various packages which tend to be numerous and small whereas for comparison purposes, the last monolithic update for OS X 10.6 was almost 3/4 of a Gigabyte. Clamav is essentially a detector for known Windows exploits, useful if you are running a mail server or file server for Windows systems but little else. Craig -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean. -- users mailing list users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe or change subscription options: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines
