Ubuntu Anti-virus
 

Can someone give comments /recommendations on anti-virus software for Ubuntu Linux .... or Linux Mint, for that matter?

Thank you,

seacue

you dont need it.

unix creates a false root. your viewer writes everything within this false root.
on exit it deletes it. all files gone.

the beauty of a unix based software.

Now now....

The correct answer is "it depends".

Sure, if you're using Linux as a workstation then by all means forget the anti-virus.

But if you're using the Linux box as a server (e.g. file server, email server, whatever) that will be providing services to Windows machines, then you do need anti-virus ... as a filtering mechanism.

There is of course, an exception to the first paragraph about workstation use... and that is the wonders of rootkits. But you'll need something more specific than an AV program to scan for those.

Finally, none of the above means Linux has some magic invulnerability cloak. It does not. There are many ways to exploit a Linux machine, but none of them use what would traditionally be recognised as a virus.

Perhaps I should have put forth a more-general question. I didn't want to limit answers to just anti-virus software.

I hereby expand the question to cover any and all sorts of protection for Linux like Ubuntu / Mint / etc.

Thanks for the answers so far.

I understand that OS X, though ultimately based on UNIX, is now the subject of anti-virus (or anti-nasties) software.

seacue

OS X is indeed based on UNIX (BSD to be precise). Open up the "Terminal" program in Applications and you can get easy access to the innards.

With its increased adoption, OS X is of course an increasing target for the unscrupulous of this world.

The exploits tend to rely on vulnerabilities in third party software (e.g. Flash, Java etc). So the first part of the defence is to make sure all third party software (and indeed OS X itself) is always kept up to date on a regular basis.

Second part of the defence is to create an additional user on OS X, of "Standard" type, and use that for your day-to-day computing. Unlike "Admin" type users, "Standard" users have no "sudo" rights and therefore cannot elevate themselves to admin status no matter how much they try. For software installation etc, you can do that as "Standard" suer, but when the system prompts you, you'll have to enter both username and password to run the installer as.

netBSD actually, BSD is something else. :)

Still a BSD derivative, no matter how you wrap it. :ugh:

in a unix network you can log on to other machines across a network and switch users but you can only have full super user (root) permissions on the machine you are physically on. you cant be super user on a remote machine.

Really ? Who told you that utter load of bull ?

I occasionally have reason to sit in a warm quiet room in front of the television and manage servers located in noisy server rooms many miles away.

I can login to the servers remotely, I can escalate to full root privileges in a matter of a few keystrokes. All using the OS's built-in tools.....

$ sudo su -
#whoami
root
#

Outside of the OS's built-in tools, I can also rebuild a server from scratch remotely, but that's another story. :cool:

If I were to be generous and give you the benefit of the doubt, perhaps you're confusing yourself with "single user mode", i.e. where the network is disconnected ? (Although there are ways around that as per my second paragraph)

what I'm interested in are what the actual weak points are for linux mint.