Anti-virus to protect against anti-virus vulnerabilities

Posted Apr 13, 2006 2:08 UTC (Thu) by Ross (guest, #4065)
In reply to: Anti-virus to protect against anti-virus vulnerabilities by micampe
Parent article: Anti-virus to protect against anti-virus vulnerabilities

The point is, the malware can trash the user's home directory, but it can't trash the system. On Windows people are regularly reinstalling the whole system to recover from these issues.

Of course the hole in that plan is that there are so many routes for local root vulnerabilities -- those aren't always found and patched quickly like remote root vulnerabilities.

Anti-virus to protect against anti-virus vulnerabilities

Posted Apr 14, 2006 1:18 UTC (Fri) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (1 responses)

Ya sure..

No root access will protect the system from the users and users from other users.

In a server environment then this is very good and is ideal situation to have, but a typical PC is a single user environment. The most important items to a user is in their home directory.

The inconvience of having to re-install a operating system is nothing compared to getting your bank account emptied because somebody pulled the password for your online banking from a Firefox session.

So if your goal is building a desktop operating system then your priorities, in terms of security, differ from a multiuser or server environment.

So your priority shifts from "limit the damage a user can do" to "protect that user's files and secrets at all costs". That single user's information is the priority.

Those files and such are the most important parts of the system. If those get violated then what does not having root matter? The attacker has everything they wanted without even thinking about becoming root. Root is immaterial.

Plus in addition the tendancy for distros like Ubuntu to ship with 'sudo' enabled by default pretty much defeats the whole user seperation thing anyways. Even if there were no exploitable local user hole (which is very unlikely) then it still is pretty easy to lift the password from the user if you control their home directory environment.

Anti-virus to protect against anti-virus vulnerabilities

Posted Apr 16, 2006 1:05 UTC (Sun) by Ross (guest, #4065) [Link]

Well I don't know how many people I've heard blame their children for malware on their home desktop or laptop. In that situation, unless you are sharing an account with your child/spouse/etc., you do get a measure of protection.