Antivirus

[Bart Silverstrim]

Mike Bird wrote:
> On Mon June 16 2008 15:17:40 David McNally wrote:
>> There's really no need for an antivirus program. It's linux; all viruses
>> are intended to be compatible with Windows.
> 
> Linux is vulnerable to viruses, albeit less so than Windows:
> 
>   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_computer_viruses
> 
> A good Linux configuration will normally include anti-virus
> both to help protect against Linux malware and to avoid
> passing Windows and Mac viruses on to others.

I would sooner advocate only using an AV if you're setting up a mail or 
file server in a cross-platform environment and saying that a "good 
Linux configuration" would have some mechanism for using MD5 hashes on 
your system taken and compared at regular intervals.

What I'm missing is a configuration that will take MD5 hashes, find 
differences, and compare them to your update logs on an Ubuntu system so 
it doesn't give you false alarms about altered files when you already 
authorized them via the update manager or installed them with 
apt-get/Synaptic.

Unlike NTFS, file alterations and additions on EXT3 shouldn't be able to 
hide in the alternate data streams.