[Gllug] Virus on Linux/Mac

[Jason Clifford]

On Fri, 2007-09-21 at 18:03 +0100, Panos Savvas wrote:
> > ISPs tend not to interfere with customer connections 
> Quite a few ISPs seems to block port 25 by default anyway.

Not that many do this. I can only think of a couple off hand. Those that
do cause lots of problems and people end up using submission rather than
smtp to get around them where possible.

There are also ISPs that only allow you to accept limited ports. They
are not really offering "internet" thought but a subset of it and most
customers just don't want that. 

> how hard is it really to write a GTK application that pops up with
> "Ubuntu needs to install critical updates, click to install now" (as
> has been happening in win for years)? ubuntu users are used to
> entering a password to install updates. end of story. sudo is only
> secure if you know what you are doing, unfortunately it is also
> necessary for desktop linux as home users cannot not have root access.

I realised earlier today that Ubuntu actually has a worse problem than
that. It caches the sudo authentication so your application only has to
sit in the background and watch out for a software upgrade to happen and
then grab elevated privileges easily and quietly. It is a potentially
huge security hole.

Now we can all remember those graphs we've seen plotting the choice
between security and usability. To be successful for the desktop
marketplace a platform has to be nearer to usability.

>  in the workplace a root admin can be called. linux i would assume is
> inherently more secure in enterprise (i would like to see independent
> studies on this), however as it makes its way into homes it will face
> the same issues windows has faced, hopefully we will do better ;)

Windows has always had a massive handicap - it is inherently a single
user system and so a security compromise at any part of the system
affects the whole system. XP and Vista have improved upon this to an
extent but the demand for backward compatibility continues to enforce
this handicap.

Linux, like UNIX, is inherently multi-user. A single user getting
his/her files damaged or lost to a trojan or other abuse wont disrupt
the whole system so long as security updates are in place and reasonable
(and usually default) security settings are in place. If you have
backups you have no reason to be overly worried.


-- 
Gllug mailing list  -  Gllug at gllug.org.uk
http://lists.gllug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/gllug