https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_malware
I fucking hate the mentality that Linux is somehow completely safe.
Just because it isn’t attacked as much because of the low adoption rate among users, doesn’t mean it has no vulnerabilities.
With SteamOS and ChromeOS now having millions of users, Linux attacks will become more commonplace.
IIRC ChromeOS is either built on or can be configured to run applications like a Linux distro?
Yes, so Linux better be ready, because those attacks will increase.
And sentiments like the one from OP don’t help one bit.
Malware for desktop users is the low hanging fruit with little rewards. You just hear about it because it’s so rediculous easy.
The real money is on servers, so that’s were real money/work is invested to develop malware for much higher gains. How successful are they again?
I think you’re right. A single desktop, unless it is either someone in a position of power or access to trade secret files, is not a time effective attack vector.
A server on the other hand can access all of that stuff across an entire organization.
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Of course not. There is a market for investing very little for some cheap malware and then putting it out there, waiting for the small amount of people (out of a billion of desptop users) falling for it. Also you go for the weakest link in defense, so scamming random desktop users is rarely a technical feat. It usually exploits the human, not the system.
But we also all know how money is actually distributed. So millions of random users being scammed for some money is still not the high reward scenario a server is. Much more work is invested there because the rewards are so much higher. And yet even then you often target people as the weak link. System security for a company is mainly user security. Teaching them to not fall for for scams as an entry way to the system. And there are a lot of professionals that basically made this their own social science of how I convey those things the best, how I enforce and regularly refresh those lessons, how to make people stick to best practices.
Are you trying to tell me this all happens in parallel to a technical server structure that actually isn’t that safe but rarely exploited because nobody could be bothered to check for vulnerabilities as it’s just Linux and the adoption rate is low?
Not just that but whenever you hear that company xyz was hacked and their data leaked, what do you think was powering their servers? Most likely Linux. Sure, they usually have more things exposed to the internet, but users install way more apps so the attack surface is vastly bigger in home computers running Linux than servers.
A lot of critical vulns are exploiting cross platform applications, log4j…
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Just use trusted repos 👍
We have GPG for a reason.deleted by creator
Possibly, but Firefox & Chrome based browsers have the same built-in isolation and other security measures as on Windows. Plus you can use Ublock Origins to get rid of malvertisements. If you really wanted, you can also isolate the browser entirely with something like firejail.
Hardend forks like LibreWolf are good too.
Oh, and Wayland also isolates clients from each other too.I don’t think it’s that big of a threat as long as you keep some level of common sense.
Oh, and Wayland also isolates clients from each other too.
One of the biggest reasons I might want to say goodbye to xfce sooner than later.
I can’t make use of most of Waylands’ features and improvements, but this kind of isolation is very much worth it anyway.Xfce does have a w-i-p porting effort to Wayland.
I have confidence that they’ll do it right, but looking at its past, it will take a looong while until it’s ready
True, but at least development is steady for now. Maybe in a few years.
And if it’s flatpak, it should be contained
Thanks to bubblewrap.
There are a lot more ways to sneak malware into a system. Especially if some apps aren’t being maintained anymore. Linux is definitely safer, but you shouldn’t let your guard down
especially if you’re a developer. There are a lot of shenanigans going on with malware npm packages that prey on easy typos. I imagine it’s the same with other library installers for other languages too
Funny you bring this up because it’s exactly what I was thinking of. A million small packages and dependencies and who knows if the repos got hijacked
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Okay, what happens if your repo doesn’t have a specific software you are looking for? A trusted repo is good, but it won’t have everything you might want. This is especially true for new software or less popular software.
Install nix, flatpack, etc. ◉‿◉
You audit the code
I don’t think that’s the correct path. There is a scanner already, called ClamAV, which works well enough.
Virus scanners don’t fix the problem though. Android does it better: security by isolation and verification of system components.The most important part in malware protection is whoever sits in front of the screen. Systems like Android have so many safeguards in place, the only way to get a virus is the user forcing it through themselves, pretty much.
There’s already a ton of such exploits. Most servers use Linux and many exploits of corporations this had to go through Linux (though many exploits aren’t related to the OS at all – eg, SQL injection is OS independent). I expect it’s more common, though, that attacks on Linux systems are either meant to target servers or were personalized attacks that you’re not gonna accidentally download.
On that vein, I also kinda suspect that many people who use Linux may be bigger targets for their employer than their personal PC. Which is actually scary, cause personalized attacks are far harder to defend against. I expect the average Linux user is technically savvy. Not a lot of money in try to do a standard, broad attack on such types (I think most attacks on personal computers are broad attempts that mostly depend on a small fraction of technologically incompetent people falling for simple schemes). But a personalized attack that happens to infiltrate a fortune 500 company? Now that’s worth a lot of money. Using Linux won’t protect you against those kinda attacks.
I’m surprised it hasn’t seen wider workplace adoption.
A call centre I used to work in once scrapped all our Microsoft Office licences and installed OpenOffice on everyone’s workstations to cut costs. It was bad for the MI staff because they relied on Excel functionality that OO Calc simply didn’t have, but the vast majority of staff could get by on OpenOffice.
My only real criticisms of how they handled this was not giving people any notice, and making us use a shitty webmail app that only booted in Internet Explorer and would sign you out after a minute of inactivity to access our work emails. They could have easily installed and configured Mozilla Thunderbird to give us some quality of life that Outlook once afforded us.
Also this happened a few years after Oracle got their hands on OO, so not using LibreOffice was also questionable.
But still. Think about the shitloads of money you’d save by using Linux in the office.
OSS is a double edged sword. It’s great, but the people looking for flaws that are exploitable are more often bad actors than good. At least that’s been my experience working in cyber security. Many CVEs that are responsibly disclosed are found to be actively exploited already.
The difference is the timing.
Exploit found in closed source software:
Probably years of usage by intelligence agencies and criminals until someone notices. (with no possible way to know for anyone that there even is a exploit). And even then it might take months for them to fix it.
Exploit found in oss: Depending on the usage of the software several people are looking for security holes and they usually get fixed ASAP. Of course it is possible that there’s an exploit nobody finds and a criminal uses, but it is not more likely because he can read the code. If your code must be secret to be secure your code is anything but secure
Yes, because “security through obscurity is not security”.
Also there is no incentive for companies to fix an exploit quickly. They will only release the fix with some scheduled update anyway or else people might notice that there was something worth fixing and that’s bad for your stock price.
Wine appears in the output of
ps aux.Nervous not-an-emulator noises.
Have people tried running malware in Wine? Would be interesting to see how ‘well’ the malware would work.
The cruder the malware, the better your chances of running successfully in Wine.
Because throwing together some simple executable using inbuild windows functions is much easier than programming something well-build and hidden based on deeper system layers. So your random “I just encrypted all your files because you clicked this .exe, now send me bitcoin to get it back”-bullshit might work well on wine (which is why wine should be run as it’s own user with no priviledges to access anything but your Windows programs).
winetricks sandbox
Pro tip: Infect your Windows friends with malware, then get them to switch to Linux
/s
#unethicallinuxevangelismtips
Anarchy = War Anarchy = You killed
Lol as if Linux is free of malware.
It was, 25 years ago. Same as Windows’ security was absent at that time.
But people never update their prejudices, so all the jokes are from the last millenium.
If you want an OS that is really malware-free, you need to run temple os.
If you want an OS that is really malware-free, you need to run temple os.
Can’t get malware if the OS is the malware. jk. RIP you crazy genius SOB.
It’s also pretty hard to get malware without network capabilities
I never said that Temple OS is usable ;)
God wouldn’t let you get malware on his chosen OS.
If you want an OS that is really malware-free, you need to run
temple os.*anything unpopular
Well, anything unpopular that doesn’t use any software (even low-level software) that is also commonly used in popular environments. For example, game consoles, embedded devices or car entertainment systems often use outdated versions of popular browser engines. So to hack these, you don’t need to be a highly skilled hacker, you just need to be able to try some older vulnerabilities.
And there are enough malicious websites that will just automatically check for these vulnerabilities. And then it’s enough to accidentally open one of these malicious websites and even though nobody wrote the hack specifically for your car, you might catch some malware regardless.
For example, when GNU/Linux was unpopular, there was no malware for it; when it became the world’s favourite server software or became a valuable target
True, but when it was unpopular it also didn’t use code/software that was commonly used on a more popular system.
It isn’t, but you’re unlikely to encounter Linux specific malware.
I’ve been using Linux for almost 20 years, and AFAIK in all that time I’ve never encountered a Linux virus. OTOH when I run Windows, I hit a virus within the first six months.
Sounds like you have bad habits, I’ve had windows for years and no problems. Just scan with Defender after a download, occasional Malwarebytes scans to make sure, and you’re pretty safe.
Most viruses are written for windows but that doesn’t mean you’re just instantly safe. You can bet as Linux grows they’ll see far more.
Yeah last time I had a windows virus was because I got a bad Photoshop crack. But the virus was just a coin miner. Before that, I hadn’t had a virus in 13 years.
With how much Adobe infects a system, leaving multiple different traces behind even when uninstalled, I think it’s fair to say that Photoshop itself is almost a virus
Genuinely, how can you get rid of all that? How do you even find everything?
Creative cloud is malware in my opinion
The Win10 iso that I definitely
legitimately purchasedhas appAppsfolder that has Photoshop in it; I’ve always just assumed I would be able to delete it from there.If you don’t have it portable-ized, though, Revo Uninstaller might help. (though I never used it for long enough for the trial to run out, so I don’t know how much it costs)
Revo Uninstaller has a free version.
Never paid for it, yet have been using it for decades.
— When the Indian Amazon support guy sees you’re a junior on your first week and tells you to execute a script to install a software for a video call with him. And you do, but it needs sudo access, so you give it…
— You have sudo power here
Sadly, true story. I never told anyone. My neurons clicked a day after that and I removed everything from the computer. It was too late, they hacked some things but IT just laughed and recovered some backups. They never knew I was the virus all along.
Good times.
Security through obscurity is not security
That’s why I use NixOS. Double the obscurity, double the security!
Say that too loudly, and you might upset the apple crowd lol
True story, Linux sees MIME types, so if Hot.Chick.Blows.Brother.mp4 is a virus, it shows up with a Windows (MZ) binary icon, not a media icon 😉… unlike Windows which only recognizes extensions 😒.
Microsoft, in their infinite wisdom, also decided that file extensions should be hidden by default. So you won’t even see that you downloaded TaylorSwift_1989_TaylorsVersion.exe instead of TaylorSwift_1989_TaylorsVersion.mp3 unless you changed that setting ahead of time.
Or worse, Numb_LinkinPark.mp3.exe just shows up as Numb_LinkinPark.mp3, making it look like it’s DEFINITELY a legit MP3!
Wait… Real?? I guess its always been a part of the first round of changes I’ve always made to Windows. Crazy how much I’ve normalized fighting the software I use.
Anyway, that’s wild. What a just bad and unsafe decision.
See, this is mostly because of 2 things. One, when changing filenames, users make the stupid mistake of changing the extension as well (having no extension that is), which of course, in Windows, it means the file won’t be recognized as a media file. Two, blind you from the truth - you don’t want users that can think, that’s not what our bysiness is about 😏. Also the reason behind why Windows has less and less options and people that want to change something have to revert to registery hacks to do so.
It’s even worse, since exe files can have custom icons, the malware will have a mp3 player icon in their exe file, making it totes confusing.
And this only gets worse, since audio file tags (and I believe video files as well 🤔) include album art nowadays, so it has an icon that is the album art… exe’s also have custom icons, so 🤷…
That’s not a Linux thing. It’s just whatever desktop shell you chose to use and various shells behave in various ways. The reason this might be safer in most Linux distros is that you’re discouraged from executing things under a privileged user which means that malware can’t make significant changest to your system easily. If you do the same in windows, you’d be just as safe.
Not exactly… I mean, yes, you’re right about the privileges thing, but Windows has a lot more security holes than Linux (or any POSIX based OS for that matter). The root of the problem, as always is the distant Windows relative, DOS… no user space notion whatsoever… and Windows NT has dragged these issues for decades now, all because MS made (bought) DOS and distributed it.
My memory is fuzzy and I don’t know the correct words to research it, but I am pretty sure that depends on the DE.
Either KDE Plasma (dolphin) or GNOME (nautilus) uses the extension iirc. Maybe that changed though.Have no idea, haven’t changed a DE in over 6 or 7 years, I use xfce.
You guys are quick to forget that Wine (Wine Is Not an Emulator) is, in fact, not an emulator. Most windows ransomware will successfully encrypt your files if ran with wine.
That is why I always try to avoid installing Wine natively
How else do you install WINE? Is it possible to sandbox WINE apps?
If you’re feeling even more paranoid, go with something even more obscure like Plan 9 from Bell Labs. It’s Unix-like but differs so much from it that a Unix or Linux type malware would do nothing to it.
I always want to try Plan 9 or one of its successors but actually never do. So many interesting concepts but nothing really to apply them to.
There’s always GNU/HURD, if you want a little compatibility
It’s a good question what I really want. I’m very satisfied with my current system (NixOS) but in the end it’s still Linux and stuff like the 9P filesystem just intrigues me. So it’s not like I’d need to switch or anything. But a playground to apply the concepts to some problems would be nice. Maybe I’ll try 9front some day and see what I can do with it
Indeed. A fun little project but unfortunately it doesn’t seem ready for any sort of daily use. Driver support (a crucial component) is probably pretty scarce. Their web browsers too are hit-or-miss, with one in particular (Links) that crashes when performing a during Google search.
Still, there are few alternatives that differ substantially from the original ancestral Unix that are available and more should be developed. GNU/Hurd and the BSD’s are the only ones I know of.
I only run z/OS on an IBM mainframe.
It’s nice you could just solder in new components.
Tru64 and SunOS are furthest I go back I think, Commodore KERNAL/BASIC technically.
Obscure OS you could actually run today could be Solaris…
but then the little Wine window appears
the wine prefix is being updated, please wait…
False sense of security. You accidentally downloaded a virus that doesn’t work on your system… What kind of habits and hygiene are you rolling with on a day to day basis?
It’s your grandma, you gave her ubuntu and everything has been good for a while.
If you use Linux because of this you are just a kid following the hype
What exactly would be a non mainstream OS?
z/OS?
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CP/M?
Downloading a virus has as much effect on Windows as it does on Linux and any other operating system: None.
Unless it exploits a security vulnerability with something that automatically touches the file. Like a virus scanner.
or a thumbnail generator
WINE
Also…Get a whitelisting antivirus on windows.
Next you’re going to say https://www.cisecurity.org/benchmark/red_hat_linux exists for fearmongering.
