[Gllug] Virus on Linux/Mac

[Panos Savvas]

On 9/21/07, Jason Clifford <jason at ukfsn.org> wrote:
>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.

scary stuff. I think so far ubuntu has done a great job at striking a
balance, but I think as it gets more mainstream these things will become a
bigger concern.

>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.

Windows is braindead in that you have to be root/admin for
completely pointless reasons.

Linux/unix/mac are architecturally multiuser systems, but at home I only
have one 'human' user, and the files and settings associated with that are
more valuable to me than the system. So the valuable part of the home OS are
the personal info/files etc which are as secure as the users habits, and not
the system itself which is likelly to be more secure than a windows system.

I have automatic backups to a network share at home, otherwise I doubt I
would be dissiplined enough to back uo regulary manualy. Most desktop users
dont know how to automate their backups. Linux is secure in a large part
because even the home/desktop users tend to be (need to be) more technically
able than those of other OSs.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.lug.org.uk/pipermail/gllug/attachments/20070924/64dc17d8/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
-- 
Gllug mailing list  -  Gllug at gllug.org.uk
http://lists.gllug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/gllug