[ubuntu-za] Ubuntu Linux virus?

[David Robert Lewis]

Morgan Collett wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 6, 2009 at 21:45, David Robert Lewis<ethnopunk at telkomsa.net> wrote:
>   
>> Not sure what to make of this weird behaviour.
>>
>> Mouse is acting very strangely, spazzes out, jumps around starts to
>> click on things. I even get logged out of my session.
>>
>> Started doing this a couple of days ago, and then just froze up.
>>
>> I fixed the freeze by unloading psmouse (sudo modprobe -r psmouse)
>>
>> and then reloading it.
>>
>> Then I figured it might be the versioning, and I reloaded by stripping
>> out the version info
>>
>> sudo modprobe -f psmouse
>>
>> This worked, unfroze but now mouse is back to its old tricks.
>>
>> It feels like a hack attack, or some kind of virus?
>>
>> Alternatively could be something to do with java and xulrunner, because
>> it happens only when I have a browser open?
>>     
>
> I like to see what's happening under the hood of my systems, so I
> always add the System Monitor applet to the top GNOME panel. I set it
> to show me CPU, memory, network and system load.
>
> The CPU display especially helps to show when something kicks in with
> a high impact to the system - like a flash video in the browser, or
> some times Firefox just runs away with the CPU and I have to kill it
> to get my system back.
>
> If you're running on a system with limited memory, that's a likely
> cause of system slowdown when the RAM gets full and it starts swapping
> memory of active programs to the swap partition only to need it again
> and swap something else out - "thrashing". Eventually the whole system
> may freeze for 5 minutes until the OOM killer (out of memory) detects
> there is a problem and kills something to free up the memory.
>
> The System Monitor helps with that too and you can show how much of
> your swap is in use.
>
> It's *unlikely* to be a virus, because in the words of RMS,
> "GNU/Linux" "wasn't designed to execute programs that arrive in the
> mail" (or words to that effect). Hence the jokes about "virus
> execution failed - please run as root".
>
> Regards
> Morgan
>
>   
Hi Morgan,

I've added the system monitor applet to the panel. Pretty cool. It could 
be just a memory outage problem compounded by some evil code, I'm 
watching the system like a hawk. Right now its behaving. So maybe its 
just voodoo or a hex from the ultraworld, or the syngularity playing up.

As for RMS and virii, I trust RMS on being a guru as far as the compiler 
and GPL is concerned, but everything else is fair game.

So, yes, virus could arrive in the mail, and reproduce in the system, 
quite easily I imagine. All they need to execute is the fairly low level 
security on the system. I am not keeping track of every single process. 
The network does not need root privileges to get up. Or am I being 
completely stupid?

Regards

David.



-- 
888          8 8                    
 8  8d8b. .d88 8 .d8b. Yb  dP 8   8 
 8  8P Y8 8  8 8 8' .8  YbdP  8b d8 
888 8   8 `Y88 8 `Y8P'   YP   `Y8P8 
http://indlovu.bundublog.com