Fear of a desktop virus?

Posted Apr 13, 2006 5:04 UTC (Thu) by eru (subscriber, #2753)
In reply to: Fear of a Linux virus by jamesm
Parent article: Fear of a Linux virus

Indeed. I recall reading recently somewhere that most of Windows malware these days propagates by "social engineering" tricks, not any more by operating system or application holes. The user is tricked into executing code from an email or web page, which then can do whatever the user has authority to do, which usually includes sending more copies of the email. The more Linux desktops get "Windows-like" automation features (and both Gnome and KDE keep trying to add them), the more susceptible Linux becomes to this kind of malware. Technically the OS does not get infected (kernel, /bin, etc are safe), but the user's desktop environment could be, meaning whatever he does within it may be compromized. See the recent LWN discussion here (".desktop files and security")