Linux Anti-virus Software - is it required?

Just installed Linux Ubuntu on a partition with Wireless access to the Internet and have a question about the need for an Ani-virus software. Is it suggested to have it installed? and which one is recommended by the Trap17 users? Ubuntu 8.04 installed via Wubi, if that matters. Both the LAN hard-wire connection and the Wireless Adapter work, if that matters...

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I wouldn't say it's something that's required or that you need to be worried about. But if you want, in Ubuntu's repository there's ClamAV. I think ClamAV is the only anti-virus program in the repository. But i've been running Ubuntu without an anti-virus program since 6.10, and all problems were caused by me with root access. ! But don't worry, even in the most extremely rare case you were to get infected by a virus (as i'm sure most if not all viruses for Linux have already been taken care of), it wouldn't be able to do harm to your system unless you were running under root; you can't log in as root, per se, in Ubuntu. Just make sure everything you install is from their repository or from a trusted source, and you should be fine.

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I'm not sure there's any antivirus software made for Linux. But if you seriously want to take that second precaution, use ClamAV. It's the only one I know of.

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There is no need for anti-virus software on Linux at the moment. Linux is inherently more secure than Windows due to the fact that, for an application to modify the system, it needs to have root access. Your usual account doesn't have root access, and you have to run root commands using sudo. If you ever did download a virus (e.g. from an email) then it would still ask for permission to run, which you would notice, and refuse. Linux also doesn't rely on file extensions to work out the file type of a file. For example, on Windows, a file called "Virus.exe.jpg" would appear as an image file, despite being an executable. On Linux, it actually checks what the file is before assigning it an icon and all that, so you know the icon represents the true file type. The extensions are mainly used for filtering in Open File... dialogs.

Good 'net practise and all that still applies - don't download unknown attachments, etc, etc.

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Thanks for the input. I'll save the bandwidth and not bother installing an Anti-virus..

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Although applaud how linux works its magic in preventing viruses and malware getting installed, I still believe that the Linux OS will have its day when someone finds a critical flaw and launches a nasty virus or worm. I am a bit surprise that the makers of the Storm Worm haven't tried to create anything for the linux OS even though I think all of the flavors derive from the original, and so if one flavor has an open flaw then all of them should have that same flaw. It could be an illogical hypothesis but I doubt it is completely wrong either, especially now that computer companies are now selling linux as a pre-installed OS, but I am not sure what software comes pre-installed with that OS.

So their might be an alternative in that software for virus protection, but I am bit upset that spybot doesn't have a flavor for linux as their site mentions that there are too many resources to do it. Which could mean that since there are so many flavors trying to design spybot for each one could take time, and so I would think that you have to be a smart internet user when surfing the net on linux.

 

 

 

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I agree with most of the posts in this thread, regarding how unnecessary is to install antivirus software in a Linux-only environment. The only justification I can find for installing an antivirus in a Linux system is to protect Windows that use that Linux box as a mail server, file server, etc.

About your comment, Saint_Michael, there is something that can be added. The typical Linux user differs from a typical Windows user in the basic fact that Linux people are usually not oriented toward commercial applications. Linux users are bad potential customers because they have discovered a world that is not only free as in freedom, but also as in beer.

As most of the current malware developments have immediate commercial intentions (to harvest your personal info in order to bug you with advertisement), Linux users are not interesting to malware originators... yet.

But even if somebody wishes to create malware that can effectively be injected and operate in Linux platforms, he/she will soon discover that Linux handles security in a much more strict and effective way than Windows; that an easy-to-exploit vulnerability in any major distro is going to be corrected in matter of hours.

It's just not worth the effort.

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