Linux, trojans and viruses. A real threat?

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.
-
- Login or register to post comments
Printer-friendly version
- 1386 reads
PDF version
More in Tux Machines
- Highlights
- Front Page
- Latest Headlines
- Archive
- Recent comments
- All-Time Popular Stories
- Hot Topics
- New Members
BSD: LLVM and OpenBSD on the Desktop
| Mozilla News and Development
|
Malware in Microsoft, Bugs in Android Apps
| Spyder – The Scientific Python IDE for Data Science
I don’t know how many of our readers are research scientists, data analysts, etc. but today, we introduce an IDE that is ideal for Python development and it goes by the name of Spyder.
Spyder is an Open Source IDE written in Python for Python development with a focus on research, data analysis, and scientific package creation. It boasts a well-planned User Interface with interactive options, customizable layouts, and toggle-able sections.
Its features include a multi-language editor with automatic code completion, real-time code analysis, go-to definitions, etc. It also contains a history log, developer tools, a documentation viewer, a variable explorer, and an interactive console, among other perks.
|
Recent comments
55 min 33 sec ago
2 hours 14 min ago
20 hours 53 min ago
21 hours 33 min ago
2 days 1 hour ago
3 days 6 hours ago
4 days 13 hours ago
5 days 22 hours ago
1 week 5 hours ago
1 week 2 days ago