[Gllug] hello

[Simon Wilcox]

On 11/08/2010 12:33, John G Walker wrote:
>
>
> On Wed, 11 Aug 2010 12:02:37 +0100 Simon Wilcox<essuu at ourshack.com>
> wrote:
>
>> there are
>> sufficiently few of us that it's not worth the virus writers' efforts
>> to write such a programme but Linux is just as vulnerable to social
>> engineering type attacks as any other system, including Windows and
>> Mac OS X.
>
>
> Surely the majority of servers as Linux ones, not Windows. If writing
> viruses was a numbers game then we should see more Linux server viruses
> than Windows ones.
>
> A better explanation is that Linux, like Unix before it, was designed
> as a multi-user networked OS. Windows, on the other hand, was designed
> as a straightforward, standalone, single-user OS (something that I
> think it does quite well). The difference, then, is that security is
> built into the basics of Linux, whereas it's had to be bolted onto
> Windows,

I agree with you but that wasn't the class of threat I was talking about.

I'm talking about a trojan that tricks someone into clicking it. That's 
just as easy to do on a Linux desktop as it is a Mac or Windows desktop.

Admittedly it is harder to make it stick around on Linux so that it runs 
on start up but easy enough to make it run each time the victim user 
logs in. On a standard desktop or laptop that's going to be regular 
enough that it won't make that much difference.

And note that I'm talking about regular desktop users, not knowledgeable 
computer users. Most people on this list obviously fall into the latter 
category and we often forget that People Are Dumb[tm].

It is a fallacy to think that Linux is any more safe from stupid users 
than Windows or Mac. It's just that we currently have fewer of them :-)

S.
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