just fyi, i've run several very large infrastructures - consisting of windows and linux machines (many, many hundreds of machines) and i can think of two incidents where i had problems like you are describing (except the porn thing - i have to admit, i've never seen porn just 'show up' on a users system through some virus/trojan/malware but i'm sure it has happened - though it may be a convenient fiction for some ;-)
anyway, some attackers broke into one of our large linux cluster using an ssh exploit (circa 2001), and another time a virus spread across many dozen of our machines infecting elf binaries (spring 2004). yes, both problems were on a linux platform. interestingly enough, we had about 50 win2k servers in the cluster (circa 2001), and never had any problems with them getting breached - just the linux machines via that ssh exploit. hey, i the first to admit that windows is not the poster-child for security, but i am just pointing out that i dont think that linux has much to brag about in this department. we've all probably heard the statistics about computer break-ins and about how linux is the champion of cracked operating systems (yes, its probably because it is something worth breaking into, blah blah.) most people realize that windows has more virus activity simply because it is more popular on the desktop, and the users tend to be more naive about running arbitrary code on their systems. just trying to be fair. ;-) Josh Coates http://www.jcoates.org -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Bryan Murdock Sent: Saturday, August 28, 2004 11:45 PM To: BYU Unix Users Group Subject: RE: [uug] Booth in the Wilkinson Center On Sat, 2004-08-28 at 22:17, Josh Coates wrote: > <heresy> > this might be heresy, but i honestly don't think it's a good use of time to > try and 'convert' non-techy people to linux. linux is an os for servers, > engineers and hobbyists. > > i could care less if my mom has linux running on her desktop, and in fact, i > don't think i would wish that upon her, or anyone else who is a non-techy. > </heresy> On the other hand, I've heard so many people complaining lately about walking into their home office two days after hooking up their cable internet and seeing a screen full of porn, or finding their hard drive is full of porn images (and likely serving them up to others), or being plagued with viruses, or even just the annoying netsend pop-ups, I'm aghast. I've been using primarily Linux at home for the past couple years and I guess I've been blissfully unaware of such problems. Those things I'm sure I wouldn't wish upon anyone. Now, I haven't yet started recommending to my parents, sisters, and in-laws to switch over to Linux, but I'm oh so tempted every time I spend a couple hours cleaning up their computers for them. I'm sure I would still be providing plenty tech support if they all switched to Linux, definitely a lot more than I do now until they got used to things, but I think I would enjoy supporting Linux and it's difficulties much more than these nasty other problems they've experienced. Maybe someday... Bryan ____________________ BYU Unix Users Group http://uug.byu.edu/ ___________________________________________________________________ List Info: http://uug.byu.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/uug-list ____________________ BYU Unix Users Group http://uug.byu.edu/ ___________________________________________________________________ List Info: http://uug.byu.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/uug-list
