[SATLUG] Thank God for Linux

[Bruce Dubbs]

pixelnate wrote:
> On Wed, 2008-04-30 at 08:48 -0500, toddwbucy wrote:
>> Too bad that the only thing one needs to do to safe guard their data
>> from an intrusion such as this is a live cd and a thumb drive.
> 
> How do we know that there aren't back doors in linux that would allow
> for this kind of thing to happen to us linux users?

Because we have the source.  There are enough people looking at source and 
building/using it that somthing like that would be spotted and all over the 
internet.  If it existed, it would be found fairly quickly.

> Honestly, I am
> curious. I play in Gnome-land and never really get all that involved in
> what happens under the interface. Are there tell tale signs that your
> 'puter is infected with a trojan or worm other than using Clam AV?

There are tools like tripwire and lsof that can tell you a lot about your system 
files and processes, but they aren't automated.

There are a couple of things Linux does to protect itself.  Primarily, it 
doesn't run arbitrary programs as root unless the user, against advice, logs in 
as root.

   -- Bruce