Differences between version 6 and predecessor to the previous major change of Virus.
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| Newer page: | version 6 | Last edited on Friday, May 27, 2005 3:04:07 pm | by IanMcDonald | Revert |
| Older page: | version 3 | Last edited on Tuesday, April 13, 2004 10:03:46 pm | by StuartYeates | Revert |
@@ -1,11 +1,13 @@
The JargonFile starts:
;: (By analogy with biological viruses, via SF) A cracker program that searches out other programs and "infects" them by embedding a copy of itself in them, so that they become Trojan horses. When these programs are executed, the embedded virus is executed too, thus propagating the "infection". This normally happens invisibly to the user.
-These days, virus has come to mean
any trojan horse, script
or other 'nasty' program that has the ability to self replicate
, and cause problems
.
+These days, "[Virus]" is an umbrella term for
any kind of malware, be it an actual virus, a worm, a
trojan horse, or any
other malicious piece of code. While [Linux] and other [Unix] derivatives are by no means immune from malware
, both the sloppier system design
and the popularity (and often sloppy administration) of MicrosoftWindows means that [Linux] viruses are a negligible minority. Of course, if you run [Windows] programs on [Linux] in an emulation such as [Wine] or [VMWare], that isolated environment is still susceptible, even if the system around it goes unaffected
.
-Thankfully, due to the security model of [Unix] and clones and the fact
that MicrosoftWindows
is (
a) so much easier to target (b) running
on 100x as many machines
as [Linux
],
there aren't many Linux
viruses out there
.
+It is paradoxical only at first sight
that Linux
is a popular system
on which to run [Virus] scanners such
as [ClamAV
]:
there is no danger of infection from [Windows]
viruses, so [Linux] is an ideal environment for sorting them
out. The ContentScanner page describes how to protect your Windows clients from email viruses
.
-One thing Linux is good at though, is stopping and dealing with Windows viruses. You can do what you like with them with almost no danger of infection unless a windows emulator such as WineIsNotanEmulator is being run.
-
-[ClamAV] is a [Free] Anti-Virus program for Linux. See MailScannerNotes for information about using Linux to protect your Windows clients from email viruses.
+See also:
+* PolyMorphicVirus
+* AntiVirus
+* JargonFile:virus
+* WikiPedia:Computer_virus
