Linux Viruses and Linux Spyware

Windows users have to be constantly on guard against viruses and spyware. Using Firefox significantly lowers the number of programs that illicitly install themselves, but the problem remains and is increasingly costly.

Linux users don’t need to fear spyware in the way Windows users need to for several reasons:

• Not nearly as many people use Linux as Windows, so a virus has a better chance if it’s written for Windows
• There is more diversity in the way Linux is structured than Windows - so it is difficult to predict what kind of system a Linux virus would run into
• There are many ‘features’ of Windows that allow simple scripts to do powerful things without any security protection.
• Virus writers know that the average Linux user is far more computer savvy than the average Windows user, so they go for easier targets
• Linux has a built-in permissions system that keeps programs that one user runs from infecting all the other programs (see first link at end of article).

There have been some semi-successful worms and viruses on Linux, but they’ve existed primarily as a mathmatical curiosity than as a threat to commerce. Occasionally there are worms that affect certain web applications that run on Linux (like the recent worm that affected PHPBB2 bulletin boards), but this is a result of poor PHP or Perl practices rather than a fault in Linux.

So should *nix users be wary of spyware? No, not really. That is, until Linux is the most common operating system. It’s already the core of OSX and there are rumors that Windows is planning on a Linux sandbox to run inside of Windows. Then we’ll need to pay more attention.

For more information on Linux viruses:
Linux: The short life and hard times of a Linux virus
Linux GUIs could allow viruses