On 3 Nov, 18:20, Bevin Watson <bevin_wat...@optusnet.com.au> wrote:
> Geoffrey, Welcome. And welcome to the world of lots of people providing
> helpful advice. In my opinion, every piece of advice you have been
> given to date has been great.
>
> First off, DO NOT GO BACK TO WINDOWS for internet access just because it
> has an anti-virus program. Even without anti-virus, you are much safer
> on Linux.
>
> In my opinion (and I have recently been working in banking fraud {on the
> good guys side}), anything on the internet is fair game.
> I have an account with less than $100 and I do backups every 24 hours,
> and I know that one day I am going to have my money stolen and my
> computer trashed. It is a bit like going out into the city at night -
> you know you might be mugged so you don't carry a bunch of cash.
>
> If you feel you want to do the "Gen Y" thing and put your address,
> birth-date, sexual preference and tax file number on the internet, then
> expect the bad guys to take that information and do whatever they can
> with it.
>
> I can personally recommend Dansguardian and clamav and backuppc. If you
> decide you want to use full internet banking (or you are really an
> international man of mystery), you should really follow Paul's
> recommendations and put in things like snort to track what is happening
> in your system.
>
>
>
> On Tue, 2009-11-03 at 19:26 +1000, Paul Gear wrote:
> > Barry Williams wrote:
> > > ...
> > > In my opinion Ubuntu and linux in general has little need for virus
> > > protection more information can be found here
> > >http://www.whylinuxisbetter.net/items/viruses/index.php?lang=
> > Ryan Ralph wrote:
> > > Hi Geoffrey,
> > > I'm a fairly simple user of ubuntu and use it mainly for browsing
> > > the internet and music playback. I don't see the need for antivirus
> > > on ubuntu as there are practically no viruses around that I've heard
> > > of. If you only download software from the repositories and don't
> > > run any suspect commands you shouldn't have a problem.
> > Lisa Milne wrote:
> > > ...
> > > Yeah, I tend to be of the same opinion. I don't use any antivirus
> > > (other
> > > than a check on my mail server so I don't pass anything on to
> > > windows
> > > users), and my main desktop is on a world resolvable IP address with
> > > no
> > > firewall other than Ubuntu's default iptables settings.
>
> > I must say that i feel that Barry, Ryan, and Lisa are giving bad
> > advice. I see a lot of Mac users doing this too - they think that
> > because viruses generally aren't a problem for their platform (which
> > is quite true) that they don't need to take precautions (which is far
> > from true). They also think that because they haven't heard of
> > something, it's not likely to happen to them. The logic flaw in this
> > should be obvious: it requires infinite knowledge to have 100%
> > confidence, and there are new attacks being developed every day. [1]
>
> > The vast majority of attacks around today are related to organised
> > crime, often involving targeted spam/phishing attacks or so-called
> > "drive-by downloads", where users' data (especially passwords and
> > financial information) is sought. [2] Most of these run in browsers
> > and are becoming increasingly cross-platform. I read recently of an
> > attack on a vulnerability in the Adobe virtual machine (inside which
> > Flash runs) which required no platform-specific code in the injection
> > vector (only JavaScript and a specially-crafted Flash file). It would
> > be simple for a malware developer to test which type of machine they
> > were running on and allow the exploit code to be cross-platform.
>
> > The "belt and braces approach" which "in the scrub" [3] wrote about is
> > not a nice to have - it's an essential. There are still ways to be
> > unsafe online with Linux, and we should take precautions. A great
> > resource for being informed about this is reading the SANS monthly
> > newsletter, "Ouch!". [4] It has lots of good advice (although how
> > much applies to Linux users can vary) and offers a great way to stay
> > informed about how to help your Windows friends when they come to you
> > with an infected system asking for help! ;-)
>
> > BTW, i forgot to mention earlier that there are also tools in Ubuntu
> > to help you keep an eye out for suspicious activity on your systems &
> > networks. I use rkhunter, chkrootkit, and snort for this.
>
> > Paul
>
> > [1] See the explanation at
> >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_day_attack
> > [2] Seehttp://www.sans.org/top-cyber-security-risks/for a nice
> > summary of current security issues.
> > [3] BTW, "in the scrub", in the Ubuntu community, it's considered
> > polite to use your real name.
> > [4] http://www.sans.org/newsletters/ouch/
>
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Geoff thank you for generating a nice set of posts
IMO one of the reasons I stay with Linux (ubuntu mint and PUPPY)
is the community .
I am a noob but have observed very little egos or I am a uber
geek type reaction
every one just dives in and tries to help .
This thread alone I have learned 3 new bits of data .
As a noob I learn by stuffing up about 6 times then remember what I
did (even if cant understand why the fix worked )
but now have systems that run xp win 7 and flavours of linux and
enjoy bits of every flavour .
Often the phone rings from some one I dont know and asks how did
the suggested fix go ?
Its a bit like the oz I grew up in used to be ---
Welcome to linux eh
Bushy Phil
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