Viruses attacking home directories

Posted Apr 13, 2006 14:55 UTC (Thu) by djao (guest, #4263)
In reply to: Anti-virus to protect against anti-virus vulnerabilities by micampe
Parent article: Anti-virus to protect against anti-virus vulnerabilities

Even if the threat of linux viruses attacking home directories en masse becomes real some day, you still have the major advantage that home directories are a lot easier to back up and restore than entire systems. That gives the minority of us who possess backup-conscientious attitudes a real fighting chance compared with the alternative scenario.

Viruses attacking home directories

Posted Apr 14, 2006 1:25 UTC (Fri) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (1 responses)

But your home directory contains secret information right?

Passwords for email or websites get stored there. A person can modify your path statement so that you can launch a trojen'd application or whatnot to steal other information.

All sorts of stuff like that.

So if your goal is to protect your information it doesn't matter if you have clean backups. By the attacker (or attacker's automated attack via virus or worm) is able to steal confidential information then your screwed anyways. Damage has been done.

Personally I have a encfs that I keep secret stuff in, but most users aren't going to know how to use that sort of thing. It would be nice to have that sort of thing built into the desktop environment.

You understate your case.

Posted Apr 19, 2006 1:16 UTC (Wed) by GreyWizard (guest, #1026) [Link]

A personal computer with reasonable bandwidth has valuable resources that are easier for an attacker to exploit than secret information. Cleaning out a bank account is more complex and risky than installing a spam relay and selling it to the highest bidder, for instance. Defending a computer is a challenging problem that has yet to be effectively addressed by any technology. Still, enumerating viruses is a particularly bad (though lucrative) approach.