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Date:      Mon, 12 Mar 2001 21:28:36 -0800
From:      Kris Kennaway <kris@obsecurity.org>
To:        Paijo <psutomo@yahoo.com>
Cc:        freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Virus
Message-ID:  <20010312212836.A4671@mollari.cthul.hu>
In-Reply-To: <006301c0ab7c$acfb0400$6600a8c0@benny>; from psutomo@yahoo.com on Tue, Mar 13, 2001 at 12:15:48PM %2B0700
References:  <006301c0ab7c$acfb0400$6600a8c0@benny>

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On Tue, Mar 13, 2001 at 12:15:48PM +0700, Paijo wrote:
> Is it possible to have our freebsd apps or OS infected by virus???

If you run untrusted applications as root, then it's possible in
theory, although I don't know of any FreeBSD viruses (there are
several for Linux).  However the UNIX security model inherently guards
against infection of system files by viruses, because users are not
allowed to corrupt system files used by others.  Root is the only
exception to this, which is one reason why you shouldn't use root for
general tasks unless you have to.  There are other security risks like
using a client application (e.g. web browser) which has security
vulnerabilities, to connect to malicious webpages, bugs in mail
readers which may allow malicious email to execute code as the user,
etc.

Kris

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