While there is no excuse for inattention and lack of knowledge, the fact is that there are Linux virus's (viruses, virii?) and there will be more. Not many, I only know of the recent irc trojan, the Gentoo trojan, a virus called bliss from 1997 and a handful of harmless others, but as sure as my britches are baggy there will be some dumb cluck willing to give it a try.

The discussion I wish to open up today is, as the title suggests, are these up and coming criminals really going to be able to be as much of a threat as they are for proprietary operating systems? My take is this.

There are basically two types of malware. The trojan and the virus (I consider worms to be simply network enabled viruses). About the only difference between these two is that one is self propagating and the other is not (duh!). So far there are far more active trojans around for Linux than there are viruses, relatively speaking. Why? It is because of the basic structure of the Linux system makes infection inherently difficult to achieve and to do so is beyond the capabilities of the average script kiddie.

rest here