From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Jul 6 10:37:02 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id DD17B16A4CE for ; Tue, 6 Jul 2004 10:37:01 +0000 (GMT) Received: from av8-1-sn2.hy.skanova.net (av8-1-sn2.hy.skanova.net [81.228.8.110]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 76A4A43D4C for ; Tue, 6 Jul 2004 10:37:00 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from ertr1013@student.uu.se) Received: by av8-1-sn2.hy.skanova.net (Postfix, from userid 502) id B2BD937E48; Tue, 6 Jul 2004 12:36:54 +0200 (CEST) Received: from smtp2-2-sn2.hy.skanova.net (smtp2-2-sn2.hy.skanova.net [81.228.8.178]) by av8-1-sn2.hy.skanova.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id A30B337E43 for ; Tue, 6 Jul 2004 12:36:54 +0200 (CEST) Received: from falcon.midgard.homeip.net (h201n1fls24o1048.bredband.comhem.se [212.181.162.201]) by smtp2-2-sn2.hy.skanova.net (Postfix) with SMTP id 285F737E48 for ; Tue, 6 Jul 2004 12:36:58 +0200 (CEST) Received: (qmail 541 invoked by uid 1001); 6 Jul 2004 10:36:57 -0000 Date: Tue, 6 Jul 2004 12:36:57 +0200 From: Erik Trulsson To: Matthew Seaman , Giorgos Keramidas , Phil Schulz , Mark Jayson Alvarez , freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Message-ID: <20040706103657.GA489@falcon.midgard.homeip.net> Mail-Followup-To: Matthew Seaman , Giorgos Keramidas , Phil Schulz , Mark Jayson Alvarez , freebsd-questions@freebsd.org References: <20040705162320.11141.qmail@web51604.mail.yahoo.com> <40E99786.5000005@gmx.de> <20040705210817.GB4560@gothmog.gr> <20040706094303.GA9617@happy-idiot-talk.infracaninophile.co.uk> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20040706094303.GA9617@happy-idiot-talk.infracaninophile.co.uk> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.6i Subject: Re: A few simple questions(...if you don't mind) X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 06 Jul 2004 10:37:02 -0000 On Tue, Jul 06, 2004 at 10:43:03AM +0100, Matthew Seaman wrote: > On Tue, Jul 06, 2004 at 12:08:17AM +0300, Giorgos Keramidas wrote: > > > Remember, this is not Windows, where everything is free and you have to > > share your personal data with the world :P > > ITYM "nothing is free, except other people's access to your data." > > > In short, I've heard of no viruses that affect BSDs during the last 7-8 > > years that I'm using a BSD Unix at home and work. > > The only malware that ever achieved any sort of world prominence was > the Scalper worm, which exploited the "chunked transfer encoding" > vulnerability in versions of Apache earlier than 1.3.24 or 2.0.36 on > i386 FreeBSD: > > http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE+CAN-2002-0392 > > http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/freebsd.scalper.worm.html > > As I remember there were only a few hundred infections, and an Apache > patch was available within hours. Hardly the sort of Internet > destroying scale we've become accustomed to with all those Windows > worms recently. If you go back a bit further in time there was the Great Worm of 1988, which targeted VAX and Sun3 systems running BSD code, and which actually did bring down most of the Internet at the time. That was the incident that got people in the Unix community to start thinking seriously about security. As for actual viruses, they are very rare in the Unix world. I have heard of one or two proof-of-concept viruses created for Linux, but I don't think any have ever been found in the wild. Trojan horses of course exist (as they do on all systems), but in a world where lots of people compile from source instead of downloading binaries this kind of code is much harder to hide, and thus less popular. One advantage the Unix world enjoys, is that people are running so many different versions of programs, and many different programs even, on different kinds of hardware, that it becomes very difficult for any kind of malware (which almost always contains some system-dependent binary code) to affect more than a relatively small fraction of the systems out there, which prevents the rapid infection and spreading that Windows-based worms tend to have. -- Erik Trulsson ertr1013@student.uu.se