https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_malware
I fucking hate the mentality that Linux is somehow completely safe.
Just because it isn’t attacked as much because of the low adoption rate among users, doesn’t mean it has no vulnerabilities.
With SteamOS and ChromeOS now having millions of users, Linux attacks will become more commonplace.
IIRC ChromeOS is either built on or can be configured to run applications like a Linux distro?
Yes, so Linux better be ready, because those attacks will increase.
And sentiments like the one from OP don’t help one bit.
Malware for desktop users is the low hanging fruit with little rewards. You just hear about it because it’s so rediculous easy.
The real money is on servers, so that’s were real money/work is invested to develop malware for much higher gains. How successful are they again?
I think you’re right. A single desktop, unless it is either someone in a position of power or access to trade secret files, is not a time effective attack vector.
A server on the other hand can access all of that stuff across an entire organization.
That’s exactly why only the rich get scammed.
Of course not. There is a market for investing very little for some cheap malware and then putting it out there, waiting for the small amount of people (out of a billion of desptop users) falling for it. Also you go for the weakest link in defense, so scamming random desktop users is rarely a technical feat. It usually exploits the human, not the system.
But we also all know how money is actually distributed. So millions of random users being scammed for some money is still not the high reward scenario a server is. Much more work is invested there because the rewards are so much higher. And yet even then you often target people as the weak link. System security for a company is mainly user security. Teaching them to not fall for for scams as an entry way to the system. And there are a lot of professionals that basically made this their own social science of how I convey those things the best, how I enforce and regularly refresh those lessons, how to make people stick to best practices.
Are you trying to tell me this all happens in parallel to a technical server structure that actually isn’t that safe but rarely exploited because nobody could be bothered to check for vulnerabilities as it’s just Linux and the adoption rate is low?
Not just that but whenever you hear that company xyz was hacked and their data leaked, what do you think was powering their servers? Most likely Linux. Sure, they usually have more things exposed to the internet, but users install way more apps so the attack surface is vastly bigger in home computers running Linux than servers.
A lot of critical vulns are exploiting cross platform applications, log4j…
With increasing amounts of people, organizations, and governments adopting Linux, we’re no longer as safe as we used to be. Unfortunately, we might have to get virus/malware scanners now like Windows users.
Just use trusted repos 👍
We have GPG for a reason.There are a lot more ways to sneak malware into a system. Especially if some apps aren’t being maintained anymore. Linux is definitely safer, but you shouldn’t let your guard down
especially if you’re a developer. There are a lot of shenanigans going on with malware npm packages that prey on easy typos. I imagine it’s the same with other library installers for other languages too
Funny you bring this up because it’s exactly what I was thinking of. A million small packages and dependencies and who knows if the repos got hijacked
deleted by creator
Okay, what happens if your repo doesn’t have a specific software you are looking for? A trusted repo is good, but it won’t have everything you might want. This is especially true for new software or less popular software.
Install nix, flatpack, etc. ◉‿◉
You audit the code
I don’t think that’s the correct path. There is a scanner already, called ClamAV, which works well enough.
Virus scanners don’t fix the problem though. Android does it better: security by isolation and verification of system components.The most important part in malware protection is whoever sits in front of the screen. Systems like Android have so many safeguards in place, the only way to get a virus is the user forcing it through themselves, pretty much.
There’s already a ton of such exploits. Most servers use Linux and many exploits of corporations this had to go through Linux (though many exploits aren’t related to the OS at all – eg, SQL injection is OS independent). I expect it’s more common, though, that attacks on Linux systems are either meant to target servers or were personalized attacks that you’re not gonna accidentally download.
On that vein, I also kinda suspect that many people who use Linux may be bigger targets for their employer than their personal PC. Which is actually scary, cause personalized attacks are far harder to defend against. I expect the average Linux user is technically savvy. Not a lot of money in try to do a standard, broad attack on such types (I think most attacks on personal computers are broad attempts that mostly depend on a small fraction of technologically incompetent people falling for simple schemes). But a personalized attack that happens to infiltrate a fortune 500 company? Now that’s worth a lot of money. Using Linux won’t protect you against those kinda attacks.
I’m surprised it hasn’t seen wider workplace adoption.
A call centre I used to work in once scrapped all our Microsoft Office licences and installed OpenOffice on everyone’s workstations to cut costs. It was bad for the MI staff because they relied on Excel functionality that OO Calc simply didn’t have, but the vast majority of staff could get by on OpenOffice.
My only real criticisms of how they handled this was not giving people any notice, and making us use a shitty webmail app that only booted in Internet Explorer and would sign you out after a minute of inactivity to access our work emails. They could have easily installed and configured Mozilla Thunderbird to give us some quality of life that Outlook once afforded us.
Also this happened a few years after Oracle got their hands on OO, so not using LibreOffice was also questionable.
But still. Think about the shitloads of money you’d save by using Linux in the office.
Pro tip: Infect your Windows friends with malware, then get them to switch to Linux
/s
Anarchy = War Anarchy = You killed
Security through obscurity is not security
That’s why I use NixOS. Double the obscurity, double the security!
Say that too loudly, and you might upset the apple crowd lol
True story, Linux sees MIME types, so if Hot.Chick.Blows.Brother.mp4 is a virus, it shows up with a Windows (MZ) binary icon, not a media icon 😉… unlike Windows which only recognizes extensions 😒.
Microsoft, in their infinite wisdom, also decided that file extensions should be hidden by default. So you won’t even see that you downloaded TaylorSwift_1989_TaylorsVersion.exe instead of TaylorSwift_1989_TaylorsVersion.mp3 unless you changed that setting ahead of time.
Or worse, Numb_LinkinPark.mp3.exe just shows up as Numb_LinkinPark.mp3, making it look like it’s DEFINITELY a legit MP3!
It’s even worse, since exe files can have custom icons, the malware will have a mp3 player icon in their exe file, making it totes confusing.
And this only gets worse, since audio file tags (and I believe video files as well 🤔) include album art nowadays, so it has an icon that is the album art… exe’s also have custom icons, so 🤷…
That’s not a Linux thing. It’s just whatever desktop shell you chose to use and various shells behave in various ways. The reason this might be safer in most Linux distros is that you’re discouraged from executing things under a privileged user which means that malware can’t make significant changest to your system easily. If you do the same in windows, you’d be just as safe.
Not exactly… I mean, yes, you’re right about the privileges thing, but Windows has a lot more security holes than Linux (or any POSIX based OS for that matter). The root of the problem, as always is the distant Windows relative, DOS… no user space notion whatsoever… and Windows NT has dragged these issues for decades now, all because MS made (bought) DOS and distributed it.
My memory is fuzzy and I don’t know the correct words to research it, but I am pretty sure that depends on the DE.
Either KDE Plasma (dolphin) or GNOME (nautilus) uses the extension iirc. Maybe that changed though.Have no idea, haven’t changed a DE in over 6 or 7 years, I use xfce.
If you’re feeling even more paranoid, go with something even more obscure like Plan 9 from Bell Labs. It’s Unix-like but differs so much from it that a Unix or Linux type malware would do nothing to it.
I always want to try Plan 9 or one of its successors but actually never do. So many interesting concepts but nothing really to apply them to.
There’s always GNU/HURD, if you want a little compatibility
It’s a good question what I really want. I’m very satisfied with my current system (NixOS) but in the end it’s still Linux and stuff like the 9P filesystem just intrigues me. So it’s not like I’d need to switch or anything. But a playground to apply the concepts to some problems would be nice. Maybe I’ll try 9front some day and see what I can do with it
Indeed. A fun little project but unfortunately it doesn’t seem ready for any sort of daily use. Driver support (a crucial component) is probably pretty scarce. Their web browsers too are hit-or-miss, with one in particular (Links) that crashes when performing a during Google search.
Still, there are few alternatives that differ substantially from the original ancestral Unix that are available and more should be developed. GNU/Hurd and the BSD’s are the only ones I know of.
I only run z/OS on an IBM mainframe.
You guys are quick to forget that Wine (Wine Is Not an Emulator) is, in fact, not an emulator. Most windows ransomware will successfully encrypt your files if ran with wine.
That is why I always try to avoid installing Wine natively
but then the little Wine window appears
the wine prefix is being updated, please wait…
False sense of security. You accidentally downloaded a virus that doesn’t work on your system… What kind of habits and hygiene are you rolling with on a day to day basis?
It’s your grandma, you gave her ubuntu and everything has been good for a while.
Downloading a virus has as much effect on Windows as it does on Linux and any other operating system: None.
Unless it exploits a security vulnerability with something that automatically touches the file. Like a virus scanner.
or a thumbnail generator
If you use Linux because of this you are just a kid following the hype
What exactly would be a non mainstream OS?
z/OS?
Temple
CP/M?
WINE
Also…Get a whitelisting antivirus on windows.
Next you’re going to say https://www.cisecurity.org/benchmark/red_hat_linux exists for fearmongering.
so, I had a pendrive that a friend borrowed once. later on another friend used it and said it had virus. I simply couldn’t know since I was on GNU/Linux.
though later on I cleaned it with dd.
I work service desk. This right here is the reason I tell Mac users they need to keep the AV on.
I think the majority of exploits in metasploit are for Linux, but could be wrong.
