[conspire] (forw) Re: linux & viruses

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Heather Stern (star at starshine.org):

> I struggle for an analogy that works here.  Viruses spread without
> conscience, and mostly without enough programming clue to know when to
> stop.  They are weeds taking over your garden, not brats breaking into
> your house.  As such, there are well known gardener's tricks for dealing 
> with weeds, and anyone who allows computer viruses to run rampant (in 
> other words, automatically for any reason) is assumed not to know any 
> better.

I like this analogy.

> In the world of Linux, you've got to deliberately lower your original
> defenses to get even a noticeable, much less a major weed infestation
> - and you're in more danger of cutting your hand on your own gardening
> tools than of finding that the backyard flowers are overgrowing your
> good spot on the couch, beating all your Nintendo scores, and ordering
> triple anchovy pizza on the interest using your credit card  :)

Quite so.  

Those of us who've been in Unix for a decade or so sometimes have to
stop and think hard about how the world looks from, say, a Win98 user's
perspective.  My mother is one such, so, when I was trying to explain to
Unix's issues of proper root-account handling, I had to stop and put the
subject in perspective:  With Win98, she is _always_ the root user, so
very little stands in the way of her actions, a buggy piece of code, a
misbehaving application, _or_ a piece of malware from destroying any
part of her system, once activated.

And then I point out that only bad system defaults (e.g., concealing
filename extensions) and bad application design (Outlook / OE
autoexecuting attachments in three-pane view, Word/Excel implementing
the AutoOpen macro) stand in the way of her completely avoiding virus
problems through the simple expedient of not running them -- despite
Win98's lack of protection via ownership/permission functions.

> If you've been deliberately targetted by someone that's another matter
> entirely, but then it's not about viruses anymore.

Of course, the topics overlap, because a lot of the same considerations
apply:  You decide what resources you regard as important to protect,
decide what threat modes are worth attempting to block, etc.

-- 
Cheers,                Emacs is a good operating system, but I prefer Linux.
Rick Moen
rick at linuxmafia.com