On Thu, Mar 29, 2001 at 01:33:30PM +1000, John Griffiths wrote: > t 10:29 PM 3/28/2001 -0500, Ben Collins wrote: > >On Thu, Mar 29, 2001 at 01:26:39PM +1000, John Griffiths wrote: > >> >IMO, this is nothing completely new or innovative. ASM has been around a > >> >long time, even before viruses. It all boils down to people being smart > >> >enough not to accept attachments form people they don't know, and > >> >especially don't execute programs sent to you randomly over the > >> >internet. > >> > >> Agreed up to a point. But all you need is one person to open it blind and > >> then the rest go out to the adsress book and appear (to the next > >> recipients) to be someone they know. which alters the balance somewhat. > > > >Good point...kind of a "the chain is only as strong as its weakest link" > >scenario :) > > > > Also worth noting that the last few headline virusses on windows have done no > more damage than a user-level virus operating on a unix machine. > > they have been notable in the denial of service aspects of their replication, > and the cunning nature of their social engineering.
Arguably, there is less of a chance of that under Linux. Most people who use Windows (like 99.9%) use either Outlook, Eudora or Netscape for email. On Linux, the numbers cannot be used against it. If you target a Linux virus for Pine, or whatever, chances are you wont propogate very far. Trying to write a virus that works on "most" Linux email clients is beyond the scope of a small viral program. -- -----------=======-=-======-=========-----------=====------------=-=------ / Ben Collins -- ...on that fantastic voyage... -- Debian GNU/Linux \ ` [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] ' `---=========------=======-------------=-=-----=-===-======-------=--=---'
