Posted: 3/16/2008 5:10:01 PM EDT
Well I am back on Linux thanks to all you geeks.  MInt 4. 0 really nice because its what Ubuntu should have ended up like. No hunting around for DVD decoder to work, no goofing around to get Amarock to work. Its ready to go.Anyway, should I even install an AV on this thing? I am the only user and even with Windows I was clean due to smart useage. My GF oldest daughter keeps getting her Windows machine infected like mad no matter what AV is installed so she is getting Mint 4.0 this week installed. I feel this girl could get it infected no matter what. So for her, what is a good AV for Linux? |
Not too worried about a Windows machine infecting a Linux one. I was wondering if I should install an AV on hers after I install Linux on it. |
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Linux has no known viruses at the moment. It would just use processing power that it wouldnt need to. There are backdoors and trojans that you do need to be worried about. For those: linux.com had a decent article just a few days ago |
Un needed... AV for Linux -> a product to install on Linux file-servers accessed by windows clients, to protect the windows clients... Viruses are a Windows thing... |
Well, mostly correct. There are some linux viruses, your risk is fairly low, but non-zero. If you're paranoid, ClamAV is a good start. |
| The only viruses I've read about were "proof of concept" lab created viruses that don't exist in the wild. If you did choose use a virus scanner, it would be for protecting your other windows boxes. Even if a virus existed, it couldn't do any damage unless you run as root all the time. Otherwise it would ask for permission to install itself. |
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My Linux box was hit with a Denial of Service" attack. The way I caught it was, a cron job I run that watches (via ps) for programs that were run with a leading character of :.: (hidden, sort of). I killled the process quickly (4 hours). This got me in trouble at work, they were my ISP, but soon was complimented on my quick discovery and stopping of the attack. I dug around a little, and found that the intruders It had got in via a security flaw in an earlier version of the Apache web server. They left all their source code on my machine (slightly hidden), I looked at what they were doing, (the clowns left logging on), It seemed the where trying to cover their tracks with bogus traffic. Long story short, take a look at what process are running, and if anything looks unfamiliar, do a man -k on it, if it looks wrong figure out what it is. L P.S. It's okay to post drunk, right? |