Re: Viruses

[James Aylett <dj-gnome insigma com>]

On Tue, Jul 06, 1999 at 03:31:25PM -0700, PQBON wrote:

[snip]
> A worm is NOT a virus... yes *nix is subject to worms/trojans/etc.. but
> not really viruses....

Then perhaps this thread should be renamed "general security for everyday
users". Security issues in general should be covered somewhere easily for
new users, and probably somewhere fairly prominent (alongside the GNOME
manual, or with the installation guide for their distro).

> The best virus would have to start set uid.... then it would have to
> change the file it wanted setuid... then it would have infect that
> file... and so on... so the only real hole that could be exploited is
> installing infected binaries setuid... 

No, not even slightly. A trojan, or an over-run attack, or anything like
that could be the method of invasion for the virus, which could then happily
sit on a machine doing other things while it uses the same methods again to
spread itself all over the place. Just because it isn't the easiest thing in
the world doesn't mean it won't happen.

I also wonder how many new users run X as root ...

James

-- 
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  James Aylett                                           www.zap.uk.eu.org
  james@tartarus.org                                    www.footlights.org