Fear of a Linux virus

Posted Apr 14, 2006 4:04 UTC (Fri) by pm101 (guest, #3011)
In reply to: Fear of a Linux virus by wouter
Parent article: Fear of a Linux virus

Depends on the type of spread. Problem with GNU/Linux, and Unix in general, is that users tend to be able to log in remotely and be multiuser. If someone compromises my laptop, they can trivially compromise all the machines I ssh to from my laptop as well. If I su to root (instead of logging out in some hard way, and logging in as root a new) they can gain root access too. If someone ssh's from my account, they've got their accounts too. It's only a matter of time before someone writes a virus/worm with sophisticated takeovers via commendeering ssh, su, as well as capturing random passwords through key capture. An ssh virus/worm, if somehow undetected, could probably spread like wildfire, just by virtue of the way Unix is used on university networks.

No explicit security holes required.