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> The statement that the Linux platform is absolutely secure now seems even more illusive. What now? When did anyone ever claim Linux was "absolutely secure"?

• cLeEOGPw 13y ago
  I am not an expert on linux, but I always assumed there are less malware first because much more people are using windows - target audience much bigger, second - malware creators wouldn't want to create viruses for the systems they use.
  • uxp 13y ago
    > wouldn't want to create viruses for the systems they use I can guarantee you that most malware authors run Windows. It's terribly difficult to cross compile software on a *NIX for a Windows environment, and even more difficult to test and debug said software if you don't have a runtime for the given executable. Linux hasn't ever been a major malware target (in the Windows sense of malware) because the consumer install base for a desktop system has always been extremely low. That said, look at how many times a Linux web server gets compromised through the application it's running (RCE, SQLi, etc), and the possible value of the data lost through those methods and you'll see that there isn't a need for researching exploits and developing malware for those targets, as we the web application developers, design those exploits for them.
  • Arnor 13y ago
    Linux certainly is not immune to malware in general or even `viruses` in particular, but a virus isn't a very effective means of attacking "Linux." While it's usually used as a catch all for any malware, a virus is a specific type of malware. It needs to be able to infect a machine then spread. Most Linux installations use a security model that requires an administrative (root or sudo) password to install software. The biggest challenge that virus authors have when targeting "Linux" is the wide range of distros. When you target Windoze you can write a .exe file and convince your victim to execute it. What type of file would you use to attack Linux users? If they use RPM, you could use a .RPM file. If they use Debian or Ubuntu, you could provide a .deb file. If you are attempting to send your virus to every email address in the victim's address book, you would need to know the package manager of the victim before deciding which attack package to distribute. Certainly, you could distribute the package as a script which determines the OS then grabs the appropriate package from a repository and installs it, but then you're exposing a lot of information about your attack to every victim. Eventually someone catches it. So no Linux is not immune to viruses, but it's more the platform than the audience that prevents these attacks. When you want to attack Linux users, use a rootkit instead. Actually... please don't attack Linux users, there are enough Windoze users out there, and you shouldn't attack them either... because... ethics
• gizmo686 13y ago
  That is actually a completly safe command to run (although I would not recomend it). rm by defualt does not allow you to delete '/'. To override this, you want sudo rm -rf --no-preserve-root / Regardless, everyone knows that sudo rm -rf / is a bad idea, try using something more cryptic. I reccomend: sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda For those of you thinking "but surely sda is mounted, Linux won't let you write to it", wrong. I just tested this on my machine (using a specially made loop-back device). You can write directly to a mounted device. For those curius, after zero'ing out the device, attempting to 'ls' in the mounted directory resulted in either ls printing "killed" and terminating instantly, or hanging and refusing to respond to ^C.