[BenH]

Originally posted by hawkmoon
My point is that all OS's have flaws, both minor and serious.

So you keep repeating, despite noone disagreeing with you.

Already Linux is starting to see an increase in the number of viruses.

3 last year none serious, the only one that was ever any trouble was Bliss back in '97, and that was only a threat untill Alan Cox ripped it apart.

Linux represents a very unhealthy enviroment for any virus, theres no VB macros, no unlocked ports, seperation of users and administrators and lack of binary executables, let alone executables that run without permission.

For an interesting and accurate article on linux viruses, rather than speculation, try this:

http://librenix.com/?inode=21

Even BSD-based OS's have their flaws and exploits. I remember one that related to a vulnerability with certain SSH installs, though I can't remember what the vulnerability was though.

And then they are fixed as soon as they are uncovered, as opposed to being hidden. You are completely ignoring the tremendous difficulty in exploiting one of these flaws and the lack of technical knowledge within the cracker community that would be required to exploit them.

When more and more crackers and hackers turn their attention to Linux then I think you will see an increase in the number of vulnerabilies / exploits.

1) Linux is a Hacker OS, its growth is in part due to this. 2) Hackers dont crack systems or write viruses _ever_. Theres no challenge, no profit in destroying something bad when you can create something better and give it away. 3) Hackers despise crackers. Crackers are the lowest form of life, who belive that by exploiting some slight loophole they show how clever they are when in fact its been shown time and time again that they are nothing more than arrogant little ****s who have some very basic technical knowledge centred around VB and microsoft. You show some ******* script kiddie some C and they fall apart.

The only ones that have the kind of skill needed to crack Linux or any other kind of Unix are usually far too busy running security companies or writing virus TK's to be used against windows due to some kind of beef they have against MS.

Even if they were to start writing viruses to be used against Linux, it would still be reliant on the user to do something truely stupid in order to allow the virus to propegate.

Nobody can anticipate every interaction that code can have under every situation and this is why vulnerabilities such as the RPC one can exist in an OS for years before coming to light. [/B]

The problems with RPC have been known about for years. I seem to recall the CDC writing about the topic time and time again. This vunerability is however new(ish) it is not the first RPC vunerability, and it will be far from the last.

Ben