Namu wrote:Zax_Gentoo_Box wrote:Something I forgot to mention? Viruses don't affect Gentoo or Linux to my knowledge. Hoozah. I think Microsoft let's them by so they can make money off anti-virus crap.
There are viruses for every system. The only reason why you may not have to worry as much as a Windows user is because Linux is not as common. They do have viruses for Linux, and the fact that Linux is open source means that making viruses is easier for it. So if it ever does kick off to kill Microsoft and remains open source...the Virus community could be even worse.
While there are some "viruses" for just about everything, windows' problems stem not only from their bad programming, but also from their security model. The problem is that in windows (for the most part, until recently) everyone had full control over their workstation. The way that most UNIX systems are set up by default is that a normal user has to escalate their privledges to a super user mode.
Therefore, any infected file that the user was tricked into running, could easily infect the rest of the machine. This was very common back in the floppy disk days. It was also very common (without human intervetion) to do it via email because outlook and outlook express would run executables without even prompting the user.
At this point, they are probably better classified as worms. These would be more of a threat to UNIX systems vs. virus which require human intervention. However, even in this case there has not been too many issues. Slapper is probably the most famous of these and it was actually a flaw in Apache (a web server). And it only infected certain versions running SSL on LInux x86. So, even if you were running the vulnerable version on PowerPC or Alpha or Arm or Sparc, etc. you would not have had a problem.
I disagree that open source opens up any more threats than closed source. Windows has had far (infintely) more problems and that is with crackers attacking without source code. Security through obscurity is not security. One of the (suppossed) advantages to opensource is that since it is open, you have a multitude of people looking at it. There are many security organizations around the world that would love to break the news that something is broken in any piece of software. In addition, look at OpenBSD. It is generally regarded at the most secure general purpose OS (I am sure that the government has some high secretive, proprietary stuff that no one sees). It is open source. The guy who runs the project (Theo) is accussed of being a prick. But, he holds people to an extremely high standard.
Remember, all software is written by humans, and we make mistakes. However, using better security models really helps. The biggest threats to UNIX like systems are faulty software which exposes a bug which can be actively exploited. When an application is running with superuser privedges and it is exploited, say goodbye to your box.
Several years ago, Checkpoint, the premier firewall application, was found to have a remote exploit. Cisco has had several problems as well with their IOS.
WIndows VIsta is suppossed to be a step in the right direction with a more UNIX like security approach. You have to escalate your privledges to administer the box.
The most famous worm of all time was the Morris worm. It took down the Internet in the late 80s. What did it exploit? An OS? Nope... Sendmail, which was, and still is, the most popular MTA out there.