Anti-Virus Software ?

[John Thompson]

Temlakos wrote:

> On Tue, 2004-10-05 at 12:22, Brian Fahrlander wrote:
> 
>>On Tue, 2004-10-05 at 11:10, Jonathan Allen wrote:
>>
>>>What anti-virus software would you recommend for running on an FC2
>>>machine ?  There are no windows machines in the network, only Linux
>>>workstations, also all running FC2.
>>
>>    You already are: it's called FC2.  :>  The only reason you'd need to
>>run AV programs is to protect Windows boxes.
>>
>>    Enjoy!

> I'm sure that's comforting--for now. And we all hope that Linux is
> inherently more secure against viruses of all types. Maybe we're right.
> But as more people get fed up with "WinDoze" or "Window$" or however you
> want to spell it, what will happen when cyber-terrorists start attacking
> Linux directly with virus operations? That's what some of my clients are
> asking me right now. What do I tell them?

There seems to be an unfounded notion that the only reason linux doesn't 
have any notable viruses is because of the small market share, and from 
that that the number of viruses for a given platform is roughly 
proportional to its market share.  So under this "logic" Windows having 
95+% of the desktop market can be expected to suffer 95+% of the 
exploits.  If this were true, however, we would expect that in markets 
where Windows has less penetration -- e.g. internet severs, where 
Windows servers comprise ~40% of the market -- that Windows should only 
suffer ~40% of the exploits in this arena.  That is not what we see, 
however: even with ~40% of the internet server market, Windows still 
suffers ~95% of the significant exploits.  One can conclude from this 
that Windows is inherently less secure than other platforms.


-- 

-John (john at os2.dhs.org)