Linux security.

hey I was just wondering if any one has ever gotten a virus while using linux or if linux is pretty secure overall. Any comments would be appriciated.

 

There essentially aren't any viruses that target Linux. This isn't, strictly speaking, true, but Linux is different enough from Windows to make this not a significant concern, at least at the moment. For example, people on Linux tend not to run arbitrary binaries. Almost all the software they install comes from the distribution itself or is compiled from source, etc.

I don't want to say Linux is inherently immune because it isn't. But at the moment and for the foreseeable future, it just isn't a big concern. You need to be more concerned about rootkits and keeping your software up to date.

 

I am new to linux, can you expalin what the rootkit is?

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rootkit

 

thanks for the link that really helps. I have heard that universal binary apps are coming out for mac, does any one know if these will run in lunix as well.

 

No. Essentially, software for Windows will run on Windows, software for the Mac will run on the Mac, and software for Linux will run on Linux. Universal binaries on the Mac aren't a way around this, that solves a different problem.

It's a little more complicated with things such as WINE, of course.

 

so if software I need isn't made for linux is there any way to make it compatible? Or do I just need to keep a dual boot machine.

 

There are ways around it. You can have a complete Windows installation running inside of VMWare, for example. WINE can help. Fundamentally, though, if you need to run specific Windows software, you need Windows.

 

Linux has it's own security issues as well. Holes, bugs, and so on. A few months ago I looked at http://secunia.com/ and found that my linux box w/ KDE, firefox, and a 2.6.XX kernel has LOTS of bugs/holes. Way more than winXP. However, most of the unpatched bugs are moderate risk, rather than critical like for winXP. Also, linux seemed to suffer from fewer bugs that would allow for remote takeover/hacks, when compared to winXP.

The other thing to consider is that linux enjoys a certain amount of 'sercurity by obscurity'. The userbase isn't large enough to warrant the kind of hacker attention that windows gets. So, I imagine that the amount of people trying to take advantage of linux bugs will go up once the userbase gets large enough. Firefox is a great example of this. There didn't used to be a lot of malware taking advantage of firefox vulnerabilities, but now they are showing up.

Now, even if/when hackers start exploiting holes in linux, you will still be in good shape because linux distributions get serious patches out pretty quickly. Firefox is a good example again. They may have lots of holes, but they get the serious ones patched pretty darn quick.

 

Of course Linux is not 100% secure. No platform is. However, the beauty is how quickly patches get released. You have multiple vendors providing patches as well the distributor of the package itself.