Date: Wed, 1 Aug 2001 23:29:50 -0700 From: "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com> To: "Matthew Hagerty" <mhagerty@voyager.net>, "Patrick Simon" <patsimon12@yahoo.com>, <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: RE: just how many known viruses are there for FreeBSD? Message-ID: <004501c11b1c$88ac1de0$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com> In-Reply-To: <5.0.2.1.2.20010801183730.018f6610@pop.voyager.net>
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>-----Original Message----- >From: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG >[mailto:owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG]On Behalf Of Matthew Hagerty > >Patrick, > >There are not really any "viruses" on UN*X systems, simply due to the >nature of how a UN*X system works. This is the most naieve thing I've ever read. The most famous virus in history, the Morris Internet Worm, was written for UNIX systems, in particularly BSD! The GAO estimated between $100,000 and 10 million dollars of damage was done by it. And this was in 1988!!!!! see http://classes.cec.wustl.edu/~cs423/FL2000/MorrisWorm.html if you never heard of the Worm. >around on the box. The security model that UN*X systems are built on makes >it almost impossible for a program [virus] to do any kind of damage, Absolute rubbish. In fact the superuser account is a giant headache and hole for people trying to protect against virus/worm programs because once you have access to root the entire security on the system becomes worthless. >so >people don't waste their time trying to write UN*X viruses and simply >concentrate on an easier platform... enter Windows. > This is NOT the reason that people don't waste their time writing UNIX worms. There's 2 reasons that the crackers don't write them: 1) Most UNIX systems are run by administrators that have a brain and as a result when security holes are discovered, everyone patches almost immediately. By contrast, most NT servers are run by morons who can't even patch their own servers even when Microsoft puts a link on the front of their website to the patch. As a result a Windows virus will live for years because there's always more systems available that haven't been patched. UNIX viruses, like the Internet Worm, have a life of perhaps 2 days tops before the holes that they exploit are closed. 2) Writing UNIX code takes someone with at least half a brain. The crackers writing stuff like Code Red don't have the intelligence to write a UNIX virus. Ted Mittelstaedt tedm@toybox.placo.com Author of: The FreeBSD Corporate Networker's Guide Book website: http://www.freebsd-corp-net-guide.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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