Malware for Linux

[Bill Sconce]

On Fri, 13 Jul 2012 10:04:44 -0400
"Michael ODonnell" <michael.odonnell at comcast.net> wrote:

> Those who use terms like "immune" or "virus-proof" when
> discussing Linux do everybody a disservice since neither
> is true.

Ouch.

I gave careful consideration to adopting my current signature line,
for exactly the reason of the problems of conveying an inference of
"immune" -- when that is not, and cannot possibly be, the case.

I only wanted to convey that it IS POSSIBLE to take security seriously,
and to do a great deal to close the horrendous (and well-known, and
obvious) holes which seem to be taken-for-granted-as-intevitable with
PCs, and with personal computing and the Internet, and that I had (and
have) spent a LOT of time and energy anaylzing those holes, and refusing
to put up with the exposure they represent, and NOT allowing phone-home,
invasion by Java, reading of my e-mail by cross-site scripting, and
indeed anything else of which I'm aware. NO, I'm not aware of everything.
But yes, it IS possible to make things better. A LOT better.

What did surprise me was how many hundreds of hours it's taken to get
this far. (And it still takes far more manual work to "live safely".
Smoothing the UI is STILL a work in progress. Hey, just a few weekends
more...  still.  So it's not for everyone.)

To return to English, you might termiteproof your house -- and still get
termites. Or fireproof it, and still have it burn down. We could, and
probably will :( get a flamewar on whether you can say things like "I paid
to have my house termiteproofed".  On whether "virusproofed" is less
overreaching than "virusproof".

I just wanted to remind myself (daily) that it IS possible to take
action, and (daily) that it's worth looking for yet another step
to make the virusproofing better. VirusPROOF?  No, never. Virusproofed?
Oh, man, what a struggle, and never "done"  ...but YES.

And very different from just hoping, *again*, that Adobe will get
Reader fixed. Or Oracle, Java.  It says "I have closed those well-known
holes". It says "I've stopped having my online fate in the hands of
Adobe and Oracle". I've DONE SOMETHING.

(And yes, this work was possible because of Linux's design, and would
not be possible on [certain] other OSes.)

-Bill

_______
Sent from my virusproofed Linux PC