3 ms·
Lame. His entire premise is a user manually executing code from a malicious source. He asked the fedora team about his article and they said it was "well-know
by yalurker 18y ago
Lame. His entire premise is a user manually executing code from a malicious source. He asked the fedora team about his article and they said it was "well-known and expected behavior" and I agree.
I might as well claim I can spread linux viruses on Hacker News by telling everyone to open a shell and type "rm -r ~" or "sudo rm -r /*".
- Harkins 18y agoThis is, however, exactly how millions of Windows machines have wound up in botnets. It's a serious attack vector.
- gaius 18y agoQuite, and this is further evidence of how very far from prime-time Linux is, when you have to just pray that users "know" not to open innocent-looking attachments sent from familiar addresses. Anyone who sneers "but I use pine!" has completely missed the point of this article.
- rbanffy 18y agoAt least for now, Linux can feel comfortable its users are a whole lot smarter than their average Windows counterparts... Maybe in Windows its common behavior to download a program that says installs something you want and running it with administrative privileges. Not so in any Linux I know.
- gaius 18y agoIt can assume that its users know more about PC operating systems but that's all. That is not really correlated with intelligence.
- deleted 18y ago[deleted]
- graemep 18y agoSurely, in most cases the vector was attachments that ran when clicked. Could this also not be fixed simply be requiring that launchers have the execute bit set? Actually, having read the article properly, I see that the post makes the same suggestion. As he also says the smaller Linux desktop user numbers and the diversity of desktops mean it is still a lot safer than Windows. How many actual Linux user have actually been infected by malware?