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Viruses and Market Dominance - Myth or Fact?

Posted by simoniker on from the wash-your-hands-first dept.

rocketjam writes "An article at The Register, authored by Scott Granneman of SecurityFocus, examines the conventional wisdom that if Linux or Mac OS X were as popular as Windows, there would be just as many viruses written for those platforms. Mr. Granneman bluntly says this is wrong, then proceeds to detail the fundamental differences between those OS's and Windows which make Windows an easy and inviting target for virus-writers, as opposed to the Unix-based platforms."

4 of 736 comments (clear)

  1. yes, but the effect might be different by civilengineer · · Score: 5, Interesting

    there would be just as many viruses written for those platforms Probably, there would be as many viruses written, or more, but the effect of the viruses would have been different. As to whether the effects would have been not as bad, equal or worse is difficult to answer.

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    New year Resolution: Don't change sig this year
    1. Re:yes, but the effect might be different by pebs · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Take a look at this somewhat related article. It looks almost like its a response to reading Slashdot and responding with a troll.

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      #!/
  2. Re:Linux Is Getting There, too! by pla · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If Linux becomes more popular, media recognition and increasingly "dumbed down" distros will make it a good platform virus writers.

    No.

    The very fact that Unix-like OSs have a concept of a "root" account (which the Windows "equivalent", "administrator", does not even come CLOSE to matching in terms of actual separation of permissions), makes it all but invincible to virii.

    Yes, if Linux becomes popular enough for virus authors to target it, we'll see a round of trojans using root exploits - But unlike Windows exploits, very few of these exist to start with, and they will (and do) get fixed within a few hours of discovery.

    Actually, for that reason, I think more Linux virii would help Linux security overall, as it would expose those root exploits faster than we can discover them normally. Yeah, a few boxes would suffer, but the community as a whole would benefit.

  3. Re:What about r00tkits? by fupeg · · Score: 5, Interesting

    You have been socially engineered by Microsoft to think that such things as one-click installs are necesarry and desirable. You have been brainwashed to believe that "if it's not as easy as possible, then it is too hard."

    Even if you think that one-click installs are necesarry, take a look at MacOS. It allows for one-click installs, but if you the program is going to change OS code/settings, then you are warned about it and prompted for a password (a la sudo.) Of course the MS-programming-kernel that used to be your brain will probably respond that having to put in a password makes the OS "broken" ...

    Imagine some software engineer saying "hey you know what would make things really easy for our users, if we could remotely take control of their computers, install patches/extensions, and optimize some of their hardware settings." There you go. That could make installing/setting up/maintaining complex software so much easier, right? Hey there are some really obvious security implications, but eaiser is always better right?