[Wylug-discuss] Eeepc and virus protection

[Nigel Metheringham]

On 15 Apr 2008, at 14:21, ALLEN, David wrote:
> The eeepc is so impressive, we are thinking of giving them to our  
> service engineers, which raises the question about virus protection.  
> Before anyone comments, I know it runs Linux and consequently is  
> much more robust than windows etc etc
>
> However,  this is a serious point if this bit of kit is to make the  
> transition from school desk to work desk. Asus have now shipped 1  
> million of these laptops so before too long someone is going to try  
> and break one. Any suggestions/views anyone? It does have antivirus  
> software pre- installed but I am not sure how effective it is.
>

Does it have anti-virus?  Don't remember seeing that.  In terms of  
effectiveness it will be crap because Asus's approach to OS  
development is to throw a copy over the wall and never ever supply  
updates.

The Eee PC does appear to be an attempt to prove or disprove the  
statements about Linux not being hit by viruses/defacements/worms due  
to it having such a low profile and therefore not being subject to  
attack from crackers.  As shipped it has some long standing (there is  
a multi-year old serious Samba security hold) security issues, and I  
don't think these have been officially dealt with as yet (I don't run  
the supplied OS on the one we have so haven't been keeping up to date  
with the original OS situation).

If I was looking at deploying these to a group I would change them all  
to a better maintained distribution, with auto updates and a better  
initial configuration that made them rather more secure - especially  
if they are not being used on just a few home networks.  I wouldn't  
bother with virus protection - general security maintenance is much  
more of an issue with non-windows boxes.

	Nigel.
--
[ Nigel Metheringham             Nigel.Metheringham at InTechnology.com ]
[ - Comments in this message are my own and not ITO opinion/policy - ]