Yesterday at 23:31, Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote:
> I think you did a great job of summing it up. But one thing I have
> never seen talked about as a way to get a virus into a Linux system is
> to include it in an RPM. Lets face it, how many people actualy check
> the scripts that are run when an rpm is installed? Do you check that it
> is signed properly? (I know urpmi will check, but I also remember
> problem with package signitures talked about on the lists...) Remember,
> almost all RPMs are installed by root, so any scripts an RPM runs are
> also run by root. And all that is needed is to hack an update mirror
> site to infect a large number of machines...
In that case, Mikkel, it's not a virus, what you're describing is a
trojan horse program.
A virus is defined as `a self-replicating automaton'. Once a
system is infected by a virus it then can replicate itself to other
systems, provided those systems are no more secure than Micro$oft's. On
Linux the virus would have to first gain root privledges on the target
host before it can replicate itself there. It's too hard to produce a
virus that can do that on real operating systems (Unices,) but easy as
pie on a Micro$oft toy.
I had a book written in 1990 called `The little black book of
computer viruses'. It was my introduction to writing viruses on M$-DOS
machines. I learned so much about how viruses work that I got rather
good at removing them manually. I even wrote a virus-removing
stealth-type boot sector virus while living in the Philippines to deal
with a particular virus that was written by some college student in
Manila, who then was selling a TSR program to remove his own virus, (the
jerk!) Bootlegging software was so widespread there that viruses were
commonplace, and that made it easy to launch mine. My virus did the job
for free destroying the jerk's virus, cleaning it completly out of
people's systems while it spread itself, and keeping the jerk's virus
out. It then self-destructed after a 5 year period. It worked so good
that only 2 other people (as far as I know) in the Philippines ever knew
about it.
About 7 years ago I switched to Linux and haven't seen a virus
infect my system since. Trojan horses are another story.
--
Mit freundlichen Grüßen,
Russ.
Visit my nursery:
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The Behne Family Genealogy Project:
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Should we continue to trust Bush as our leader? Read this, then you decide:
http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_4636.shtml
----------------------=====[Russell's Quotes 1]=====----------------------
He that pursues two hares at once, does not catch one and lets t'other
go.
--------------------=====[Russell's Quotes 2]=====------------------------
The Constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You
have to catch it yourself.
--Benjamin Franklin
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