Worms versus Bots

Wed May 5 18:23:11 UTC 2004

--On Wednesday, May 05, 2004 6:04 AM -0400 Matthew Crocker 
<matthew at crocker.com> wrote:

> We have all been through this before.  Linux out of the box is generally
> no more secure than Windows.  Linux can also be misconfigured and hacked.
> The reason why you don't see as many linux virus/worms is because there
> aren't as many linux desktops.  Once Linux becomes a real player in the
> residential desktop OS market you'll see more and more worms/viruses
> running around because of it.  Now, I love Linux,  I have 30 linux
> servers in production but it isn't the be all, end all to mass user
> security.

In the past this may have been true, it's been my experience that most 
modern Linux distributions have adopted (more or less) the approach that 
OpenBSD has: Leave services turned off by default. In fact, a typical 
RedHat workstation installation goes a step further by not even installing 
a lot of services by default.  Sure, Joe Sixpack can still install 
everything and uncomment everything from /etc/inetd.conf[1] and get himself 
pwned, but I don't think we have to worry much about your average computer 
user doing this.

-J

[1] Actually since RedHat uses xinetd, it involves a little more work to 
turn _everything_ on.

--
Jeff Workman | jworkman at pimpworks.org | http://www.pimpworks.org