[wellylug] Virus

[Don Jones]

> However, life is made harder for the Linux virus writer that wants to
> use email as a vector, because few people read their mail as root, and
> the Linux software ecology is more diverse. Not all Linux boxes are x86,
> for a start!

I agree

Viruses thrive in a monoculture, Linux will never be a monoculture, think of all the differnet mail clients avalible in Linux, plus not running as root is a serious impediment to viruses - perhaps if they incorporated a local root exploit.

You cant rely on a defult install for linux - only the Kernel is standard - and even then theres a lot of diversity - theys why the moderately successfull worms have been targeted at the default installs of the most common distro - RH6.2 which is as close to a standard OS as linux has gotten. 

And Linux is a moving target - linux boxes tend to go through much more re-installs than windows boxes - eg when mandrake 8.2 came out I personally installed it on 4 boxes, admittedly i could upgrade some of the FreeBSd boxes i administer - but theres the diversity protection again.

Other factor is that open source is a better development methodology than closed source - holes come to light and get fixed a lot earlier, more robust code in the long run.

Don Jones
-- 

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