On Sun, 18 Apr 2010 17:46:56 -0400 "Steven W. Orr" <steveo@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > I have this feeling that most people are missing the point of why CLAMAV is a > useful tool. If you do it to protect yourself against a virus then that's the > wrong reason. We can debate this till we're blue in the face, but AFAICT there > is no threat of a virus against anything other than Windows. There have been some limited Linux viruses but they are perfectly writable. The reasons they don't exist are often put down to three things - There are more windows users - More of the gullible people use Windows - More people who don't care run Windows. In many workplaces having the computer down for a day with a virus is effectively rewarded with a day of less work, and more interest... > I don't know why, but people love to think all computers are susceptible to > viruses, but more viruses target windows because there are more of them. There > may be a virus out there that could hurt a linux of os/x platform, but I > haven't seen one yet. At least not since the Morris Worm of '81? There have been two or three. > Windows gets viruses because they are architecturally open to such things. > People who run Windows tend to run with full admin privs. Windows has gone out > of their way to make programs that run under DOS be compatible with running > under Windows 7. And last but not least, people who run Windows are frequently > not even aware of the concept of the difference between code and data. It's an > attachment. You just *open* it. And *opening* an attachment could be a jpg > that is displayed with something trusted or running some nasty binary that > could do literally anything. The number of Linux people who don't realise that this is just as true viewing a PDF or PS file in the wrong way is astounding. PDF and PS have a safe mode but an alarming number of people set their helper apps up to view them without the safe flag being on or save them to disk and later view them directly with apps that are not in safe mode. Windows certainly makes it easier to fool users, but architecturally it's fairly robust nowdays - which is one reason viruses took to email and file sharing to get around this. Alan -- users mailing list users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe or change subscription options: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines
