Full Disclosure mailing list archives
Re: Re: January 15 is Personal Firewall Day, help the cause
From: "David F. Skoll" <dfs () roaringpenguin com>
Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 21:44:25 -0500 (EST)
On Fri, 16 Jan 2004, Mary Landesman wrote:
There are several firms offering desktop antivirus for Linux. Here are a few that come to mind:
Thanks. But unless I'm mistaken, the database of virus signatures included with those products is either entirely or overwhelmingly for Windows viruses. These products are designed to protect Windows systems that may be accessing files on Linux or UNIX systems. The McAfee blurb, for instance: "There are now in excess of 85,000 threats and more than 275 new threats appear each month" That describes Windows viruses, not Linux. The Authenium blurb, for instance: "Provides virus scanning of embedded (OLE) documents. When documents are scanned, if an infected document is embedded in an Excel spreadsheet or a PowerPoint document,..." The BitDefender blurb is rather funny: "Available for most UNIX platforms, the product has the role to keep you away from worms like Morris or Scalper..." Let's see, the Morris worm spread in 1988, over 15 years ago. :-) I don't think anyone's even running any of the vulnerable architectures any more (VAX and Sun-3 boxes running ancient versions of Sendmail.) FreeBSD scalper worm was from June, 2002, over 1.5 years ago. According to Symantec: "So far, we have not received any customer reports of this worm." (http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/freebsd.scalper.worm.html) I guess a couple of worms in 15 years is a little better than, quote, "275 new threats... each month"
Thus, if you are running Linux workstations and you do want antivirus software, there are options available.
If you want to send me $99.95 in return for nothing, I'll gladly accept it. It'll be about as effective as buying AV software for Linux. Regards, David. _______________________________________________ Full-Disclosure - We believe in it. Charter: http://lists.netsys.com/full-disclosure-charter.html
Current thread:
- RE: Religion... was RE: Re: January 15 is Personal Firewall Day, help the cause, (continued)
- RE: Religion... was RE: Re: January 15 is Personal Firewall Day, help the cause Bill Royds (Jan 18)
- RE: Religion... was RE: Re: January 15 is Personal Firewall Day, help the cause Mike Marshall (Jan 18)
- Re: Symantec AntiVirus and AOL Joshua Levitsky (Jan 18)
- Re: Re: January 15 is Personal Firewall Day, help the cause Martin Mačok (Jan 19)
- Re: Re: January 15 is Personal Firewall Day, help the cause Valdis . Kletnieks (Jan 19)
- Re: Re: January 15 is Personal Firewall Day, help the cause Michal Zalewski (Jan 19)
- Re: Re: January 15 is Personal Firewall Day, help the cause Valdis . Kletnieks (Jan 19)
- Re: Re: January 15 is Personal Firewall Day, help the cause Michal Zalewski (Jan 19)
- Re: linux noexec (Re: January 15 is Personal Firewall Day) Martin Mačok (Jan 20)
- Re: Re: January 15 is Personal Firewall Day, help the cause Mary Landesman (Jan 16)
- Re: Re: January 15 is Personal Firewall Day, help the cause David F. Skoll (Jan 16)
- Re: Re: January 15 is Personal Firewall Day, help the cause jan . muenther (Jan 16)
- Re: Re: January 15 is Personal Firewall Day, help the cause David F. Skoll (Jan 16)
- RE: Re: January 15 is Personal Firewall Day, help the cause Bill Royds (Jan 16)
- RE: Re: January 15 is Personal Firewall Day, help the cause Erik van Straten (Jan 17)
- Re: Re: January 15 is Personal Firewall Day, help the cause jan . muenther (Jan 17)
- Re: Re: January 15 is Personal Firewall Day, help the cause William Warren (Jan 17)
- Re: Re: January 15 is Personal Firewall Day, help the cause Ron DuFresne (Jan 20)
- Re: Re: January 15 is Personal Firewall Day, help the cause Alvaro Gomes Sobral Barcellos (Jan 23)
- Re: Re: January 15 is Personal Firewall Day, help the cause David Luyer (Jan 17)
- Re: Re: January 15 is Personal Firewall Day, help the cause Valdis . Kletnieks (Jan 16)