Bloodsuckers

Posted Feb 18, 2003 18:17 UTC (Tue) by rknop (guest, #66) [Link]

What you see here is the anti-virus industry becoming worried by the possibility of desktop Linux (and hence a virtual destruction of their business model.) So they try to scare Linux users into believing they need anti-virus protection.

I suspect that job is long done. The world at large has been scared into the need for anti-virus protection for quite a while now. Users probably are aghast at the idea of buying a computer system without virus protections. Businesses probably have a policy that every corporate desktop must be running anti-virus software. So, even though it's not the #1 threat to Linux systems, it is the #1 requested Lindows feature.

I don't know what Lindows looks like when it is installed. However, there are some very simple mistakes you can make that are far more likely to expose your Linux system to hacking then not having virus scanning software. For instance, your desktop system should have all services shut down, preferably with iptables, but at least in your inetd configuration. Then, enable only that which you know you need. (For many desktop users, this is nothing.) Then you must keep up to date with security patches. Once you've done those two things, you've made yourself so much more secure than a huge number of other systems out there that you're unlikely to fall prey to a security breech.

One day we will probably see a Linux mail program which really tries to be as friendly as the Microsoft mail programs, and which automatically executes macro code. Terrible, terrible idea, but hey, if we want to attract the desktop crowd, I guess whe have to implement the features-that-should-be-called-bugs that they want. Once that happens, the number of Linux viruses that spread will start to ride. Geek Linux users still won't be succeptible, becuase they will have turned off automatic macro execution (or, more likely, will just be using a different mail client), but many non-geek users will be succeptible. For those non-Geek people, they will be just as happy to have Virus scanners, to make them feel secure. Of course, the virus scanners won't do any good if they aren't kept up to date (just like the rest of the system), so who knows how much more they will do than help people feel secure, but people like to feel secure even if gratuitously. (If they didn't, Congress would never have passed that extremely troubling piece of legislation called the "Patriot" act.)

-Rob