Clamav

[Patrick O'Callaghan]

On Thu, 2010-04-15 at 13:02 -0700, Michael Miles wrote:
> Is Fedora really that secure?

Even if we limit the discussion to email viruses, that's a very complex
and difficult question (to which the answer is "yes" :-). It's not an
attribute exclusive to Fedora as such, but to all Unix-based systems,
mainly for three reasons:

1) The mail client isn't running as root.
2) Even when running as root, Linux mail clients won't blindly execute
attachments.
3) Even for executable attachments, the virus is written for Windows and
won't run on Linux.

Of course it's in principle possible to get past all the above barriers,
so *in theory* you can have a Linux virus, assuming the user is stupid
enough to run an unknown executable. As I say, I've never seen one in
the wild.

> I come from windows and I am amazed at how not secure windows is.

See (3) above. Most viruses are written for Windows as it's the most
popular platform. MS likes to pretend that's the only reason it gets all
the grief, but there are other factors.

poc