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| DavidA:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RPM_Package_Manager http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bash_%28Unix_shell%29 Hope these help a bit. This is probably the biggest problem with any Linux system. Learning what all the acronyms mean. Dave |
| BaronJ:
Hi Guys, Over time there has been numerous attempts to attack and compromise Linux systems. I only ever recall one virus in the twenty odd years of my running Linux. Windows is such an open target and is so widely used that its obvious that its the one to attack. Its so easy because Windows does all sorts of things, behind your back, so to speak. Arguably to be helpful ! Someone mentioned pictures. Well yes ! you can hide a virus in a picture or in music, or a pdf ect. But in order for it to do any damage it has to be executed by the cpu. If you can find a way to have the processor run the code then you have your access to that system. Linux is no different in this respect. However it is not only very very difficult to do on a Linux system but if it did it can only run as the user that activated it. The holy grail on a Linux system is obtaining "Root" access. Once this is done, you can do anything you like including wiping the whole system. The current weak spot is actually the web browser ! Since the same web browsers run on both Windows and Linux these are now being targeted. But virus are becoming old hat since for the attacker its is more profitable to steal credit card, bank account, passwords and other things, information that you may use in running your daily life. |
| CrazyModder:
--- Quote from: awemawson on April 24, 2014, 05:49:04 AM ---I never understood this 'immune to viruses' thing with Linux / Unix. Surely if everything is open source it is even more vulnerable. :scratch: --- End quote --- That's easy. Unix has been a multi-user system from the very start; the universities had those big networked servers back in the days, and the students were allowed access to them, but (rightfully :) ) distrusted at every corner. So security has been built it right from the start. Being students, hacking the system, i.e. gaining "root" access to the system, was (and is) a sport, so there was (and is) a constant battle between highly intelligent and knowledgeable attackers and defenders (i.e., the programmers and administrators of the system software, firewalls etc. embedded in Unix systems). Windows traces back to un-networked DOS, which was single user and had no security features at all at the beginning - nobody except yourself could access the machine, so why bother. Of course, it's gone a far way from that, today, but many of the concepts in Windows still are such that they are just fundamentally more open to attack than Unix. So in Windows there's a constant patching of holes, while in Unix the system is basically more or less sound from the beginning - security holes occasionally appear due to bugs (or lazy users :) ), but it stands on a much more secure base. Having public access to the source code makes a software inherently *more* secure, because of peer review. There are many people who pride themselves in finding security holes first, and publish them on special web sites for everyone to see. If it's a glaring hole, then the developer of the software is usually informed up front so they can close it before really bad stuff happens. So open-source software is under much more scrutiny. |
| DavidA:
..nobody except yourself could access the machine, so why bother... The problem was that people used to swap files via floppies. And also buy programs on disc. Many of these had viruses attached It was considered great fun (by some people who are now, hopefully, rotting in some version of Hell) to add little gifts like the much feared AntiCmos-A. Get that on your system and you could only pray for a miracle. Dave. :bugeye: |
| mattinker:
--- Quote from: DavidA on April 25, 2014, 01:17:15 PM ---.. nobody except yourself could access the machine, so why bother... The problem was that people used to swap files via floppies. And also buy programs on disc. Many of these had viruses attached It was considered great fun (by some people who are now, hopefully, rotting in some version of Hell) to add little gifts like the much feared AntiCmos-A. Get that on your system and you could only pray for a miracle. Dave. :bugeye: --- End quote --- Dave, what have you decided to do, are you going to run a Linux system? Regards, Matthew. |
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