Internet Explorer 8

[downside]

I'm not remotely worried about picking up a virus using Linux and to be honest I have never met anyone who ever had their security compromised.

Many of these so-called threats to Linux seem to be theoretical:

Considered a proof-of-concept virus, it has not been found in-the-wild. As such, it is not posing a threat to users

I've never heard of a Linux server being brought down by a virus.

If you try to open an attachment on a Linux system using something like Thunderbird and that attachment was an executable file, then you would need to be a superuser to run the file.

On a Windows system then it depends on the mail client.  Some will not let you open an attachment or will query it and say that it is a security risk.

The point about Admin privileges on a Windows system is what happens when you are browsing and the likely consequences of accidentally downloading and installing - something like a trojan, which is what happens to 100's of users every day.

[Nick29]

Many of these so-called threats to Linux seem to be theoretical:

Err, no - one of them was written to prove that it was possible to write code that would affect two different OS's, and I made that clear in my post.  All the other viruses I posted have been found in the wild, and many of them have been around for a long time (one of them since 2001).

Open-source applications can be both a blessing and a curse.  People who want to hack into Windows have to crack the code first, because Windows is not open-source.  Just recently two programmers writing open-source code for Firefox attachments fell out with each other, because one had admitted writing malicious code which would knock out features in his competitor's attachment.  This to my mind is the greatest security threat in Firefox.

[Redroger]

Thanks for your support Downside, Nick quotes 6 viruses by name, one of which "has never been seen in the wild". When I finished work over 13 years ago, there were already many thousands of viruses let loose on windows. I have also run Firefox browser, not it has to be admitted very often, but I( have never had a virus.

[Nick29]

How do you know you've never had a virus ?

[GOODDOG]

hi falkyrn

  i know i posted a reply to your letter re the  questions i asked, IE cclean etc. it was just to tell you that the spybot s&d say there is a problem. it seems that IE has an immunization feature of spybot s&d causes slow startup.

have just gone back to the webpage and it is IE8 which has the problem.

   michael

[Redroger]

If I had had a virus Nick, then surely it would have caused something to happen or fail when I was using the Ubuntu on my machine. If it didn't what point was there in writing it?

[Nick29]

Why is everyone convinced that a virus causes something nasty to happen ?

There are two main reasons why people put viruses on computers.....

1. To turn the PC into a "bot", to spread spam, or to create denial of service attacks.

2. To spy on someone's personal details, and to log keystrokes, and to transparently transmit this information back to interested parties.

The very last thing they want to do is to do anything which would betray their presence, because they want their virus to continue doing its work for as long as possible.  It's a total urban myth that people who create and spread computer viruses do it to create havoc or cause computers to crash.  The truth is the total opposite.

[Redroger]

That makes sense Nick, but it seems that not all virus writers are that sensible if misguided.

[RJ_Paton]

hi falkyrn

  i know i posted a reply to your letter re the  questions i asked, IE cclean etc. it was just to tell you that the spybot s&d say there is a problem. it seems that IE has an immunization feature of spybot s&d causes slow startup.

have just gone back to the webpage and it is IE8 which has the problem.

   michael

Yes I've just seen that - Unfortunately I missed that as I use Firefox and Chrome as my primary browsers and neither are affected by the problem.
It would appear that safer networking, the creators of Spybot S&D are working on a solution so fingers crossed it won't be that long.
In the meantime it may be more beneficial to uninstall S&D.