full-disclosure - Re: Windows' future (reprise)

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Message-ID: <20100515124049.0a356083@shuttle>
Date: Sat, 15 May 2010 12:40:49 -1000
From: Peter Besenbruch <prb@...a.net>
To: full-disclosure@...ts.grok.org.uk
Subject: Re: Windows' future (reprise)

On Sat, 15 May 2010 16:22:26 -0400
Jeffrey Walton <noloader@...il.com> wrote:

> This is
> along the lines of, 'Linux does not get viruses' argument. Give me a
> break...

I set up a dual boot arrangement on a friend's machine. The Windows
side promptly got infected. The guy was furious and blamed his son.
Fortunately, it was a relatively easy infection to clean. The tip off
that all was not as the man claimed, was when I found several copies of
the virus saved to his home directory in the Linux side. It seems he
hadn't been able to get the attachment to run under Linux, and had
switched to Windows.

Now, I am NOT arguing about Linux being safe because no-one writes
malware for it. I am arguing that that the guy was safe running
Linux because:

a) He could only save the attachment to disk.
b) Had it been Linux malware, he would have had to make it executable.

The guy wasn't knowledgeable enough to do all that. He also didn't know
that much about how malware gets delivered. I suspect that there is a
broad correlation between computer knowledge and safe on-line behavior.
The irony is that the less a person, or employee knows about computers,
the better off everyone would be if that person ran Linux.

-- 
Hawaiian Astronomical Society: http://www.hawastsoc.org
HAS Deepsky Atlas: http://www.hawastsoc.org/deepsky

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