Ever find malware?

[houseworkshy]

I'm actually grateful to microsoft for windows just as I'm grateful to the Wright brothers for flight, however I don't want to use windows on todays internet anymore than I'd want to try crossing the Atlantic in a wood and canvas plane held together with glue. If it hadn't been for windows I doubt we'd have got so far with linux as so much of the work depended on using windows to collaberate and distribute online.
I did find antivirus programs useful in windows as it was my habbit to download the .exe file and scan it before installing. Whist this wasn't useful for unknown threats it did at least provide some protection against the known ones. I was, and still am something of a freeware games addict. Ah game hippo, home of the underdogs, and similar sites entertained this empoverished man for years, you are remembered with fondness may you rest in peace.

Whilst I don't use windows anymore, unless I have too, it is still better as a gameing system not inherently but because the comercial vendors favour it there is more to choose from. The fact that that is a commercial reason doesn't mean it isn't true. If one can keep the frail old thing running and afford the commercial software it is still the best choice as a toy.

Certain things can help such as the use of guest accounts and various software from elsewhere to prop up its major failings. Why is the inbuilt firewall always so bad especially as the first thing anyone has to do after installing is go online for patches and why does the built in installer leave such a mess in the registry when uninstalling? Just sloppy, don't know now but at the time reg-seeker was another essential crutch I'd always pull in. The biggest problem for me with windows was that the super user wasn't. This meant that the various scanners would throw "permission denieds" even when "run as admin". Whilst one could with a lot of time and effort get at quite a lot of the system one had actually paid for, dealing with it's ever growing hidden logs or trying to kill a rootkit was such a pain that reinstalling and all the mither associated with it was often quicker. Probably the best solution is to sandbox windows inside something a little more robust which can mend it from outside. I admit to being a little out of date as xp was the last verion I used much because Vista's problems removed me from microsofts future customer base, probably for good. I do hear good things about windows 7 from friends who have persevered with MS.

Downtime and insecurity make it a very bad move for business or anything which really matters. That said every new release of Ubuntu since 8.04 has taken me longer to tweek into a state fit for use. 9.10 took so long I've decided to save new Ubuntu's for the "experiment with in spare time drive" while the "getting the job done in time" drive either has old, but still supported, versions or something like Debian. As an aside if releaces go back to being out of the box the favoured business system, will be the most popular linux ( Ubuntu) very quickly, if not then never. Because educational establishments cater mainly for business this is pertinant to them too.

The anti malware and diagnostic programs are useful; I remember the sysinternals suite was so handy that I was suprised that it wasn't actually part ot windows as default. However I agree with the majority of the posters above, good practice is more important than extra software, though I don't see it as an either/or argument. This is as true of Linux as it is of Windows or Mac.

When linux machines represent a high market share then it will have just as much malware writing attention and as many problems as the previous market leader. Besides what are all those clever anti-malware people going to do without malware for their products to clean except get another job and maybe develop, never to be releaced into the wild, test scenarios as a hobby. Anyone remember where the first root kit came from? Maybe I'm too much of a cynic but I still maintain that linux is on honeymoon and will have an artillary battery of malware to deal with when it's head rises too far above the parapit.

[mrperkins]

Tonight for the first time I had one of those fake windows virus alerts pop up. I have NEVER ran across this before in linux but I have had to reformat three widows boxes because of this malware. Obviously that is one big reason I run linux. When the pop-up appeared it would not go away but kept spawning. I had to use xkill to shut down firefox. I restarted firefox and the malware came up again. Humm,.. that does not sound good. I turned off scripts and started a google search but so far have not ran into anything. I am pretty concerned about this. I started firefox again and the malware did not fire up. If this is a new variation that can live inside a linux version of firefox this could be problematic. Thoughts or ideas on this? Mike

[bodhi.zazen]

Tonight for the first time I had one of those fake windows virus alerts pop up. I have NEVER ran across this before in linux but I have had to reformat three widows boxes because of this malware. Obviously that is one big reason I run linux. When the pop-up appeared it would not go away but kept spawning. I had to use xkill to shut down firefox. I restarted firefox and the malware came up again. Humm,.. that does not sound good. I turned off scripts and started a google search but so far have not ran into anything. I am pretty concerned about this. I started firefox again and the malware did not fire up. If this is a new variation that can live inside a linux version of firefox this could be problematic. Thoughts or ideas on this? Mike

Aye, browser security is somewhat cross platform.

The good news , this kind of thing does not affect your OS, so you do not need to wipe hard drives and re install your os. Just understand what these things are and how to prevent them.

Most of them are blocked by noscript.

Some are blocked by adblock of some kind.

See : How to Secure Firefox - Ubuntu Forums