[Ilugc] query about virus attack on UNIX / LINUX environment
- From: girishvenkatachalam@xxxxxxxxx (Girish Venkatachalam)
- Date: Thu Sep 17 12:29:23 2009
On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 4:43 PM, Selvakumar Rajeswaran
<selva_rsr@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hi all,
Is there any concept of virus attack on UNIX / LINUX environment.
There are worms on UNIX. Cisco routers are known for attacks long ago
that brought LANs down.
Google for Mellissa , ILOVEU and many other worm attacks.
People often get confused between worms and viruses.
In the Windoze world normally worms infect your computer to send mails
using your addressbook contacts and send spam using SMTP.
Such things can never happen on UNIX.
But illegitimate traffic and denial of service attacks are possible.
In general till date we have hardly seen any worm on UNIX. Though the
first worm by Robert Tappan Morris was using the finger program on
UNIX. ;)
Or, if UNIX / LINUX is robust enough that it cannot be attacked by virus,
then what is the underlying framework (or technicalities of LINUX) that makes
it robust.
Very long winded answer is necessary here. Don't have time.
In short, the motivation for virus writers is less since they cannot spread
as quickly as Windows viruses.
Moreover Linux world is fragmented. It is hard to find a uniformly installed
software that can be used for propagation.
Apache attacks are common, SQL injection attacks do happen and there
are many attacks that happen on servers. Since nearly all servers run
UNIX, there are vulnerabilities.
But separation between processes and checks and balances in design and
programming help us.
Because, usually I see windows machines r easily attacked by viruses.
There are far more Windows users on earth than Linux/UNIX users.
This fact will never change.
Is it a good idea to consider installing UNIX / LINUX if they r robust for
virus attacks in comparison to windows machines ?.
If you ask in Linux User's Group then I wonder what answer you expect.
-Girish
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