[ubuntu-uk] Checking to make sure you are safe...port checking etc.

[Alan Lord (News)]

On 23/04/10 11:47, John Matthews wrote:
> Even though we get told most of the time Linux is safe, the more tis
> used, the more viruses will get written for it.

If you think about it, a great deal of the world's business and network 
infrastructure runs on Unix and Linux systems. There are fundamental 
differences between these platforms and Windows which make writing 
viruses hard and make virus proliferation *very* hard to do.

Obviously we can never say never, but to get a virus to propagate on 
Unix based systems really requires them to be just badly set up or for 
you to be running as root.

For the uber-paranoid, one way to virtually emilinate the risk of virus 
propagation is to have 2 accounts on your system and only ever use the 
one with non-admin rights to surf and retrieve emails etc. This way, 
even if you are tricked into running something that needs sudo, you 
won't be able to run it.

I noticed somebody was
> talking about checking ports to see if they are visible to the outside.
> How do you do that? Is there any software, or can it be done via the
> Terminal. Can somebody help?

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=open+port+checker

Top search result.

Al


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