[OT] linux viruses statics

[Bruno Wolff III]

On Thu, Jan 29, 2009 at 04:19:01 +0000,
  g <geleem at bellsouth.net> wrote:
> Kevin Kofler wrote:
> 
> > Statistics on GNU/Linux viruses? What's next: statistics on pink unicorns?
> > Flying pigs? Even primes other than 2? ;-)
> 
> thanks for your reply kevin. one way or other, you can always be counted on. :)
> 
> seriously. i know that they are near nil for linux, and more for ms that there
> are satisfied ms windows users.

What are you trying to accomplish? It has been known almost from the start
of virus scanning, that blacklists were a broken way to do things. So there
really isn't a need to get a list of viruses or worms. If you want lists,
you want lists of code that is OK to run.

Linux users can still have problems with viruses or worms. Until SELinux
gets a bit better, they can still be tricked into running programs similar to
how Windows users are. There are some apps that run on linux that are
designed to easily execute code disquised as data. Open Office is one
case where this isn't considered a bug. And there are still bugs that
can be exploited being found from time to time.
And things are getting worse. I see lots of complaints here about flash not
working. You need to be crazy to be running flash programs from random
web sites. And people are still trying to turn web browsers into an
application environment instead of a simple document viewer.