Linked by Thom Holwerda on Sun 23rd Sep 2007 10:54 UTC, submitted by irbis
"For at least a decade, the standard advice to every computer user has been to run antivirus software. But new, more commercial, more complex and stealthier types of malware have people in the industry asking: will antivirus software be effective for much longer? Among the threats they see are malware that uses the ability of the latest processors to run virtual machines that would be hidden from antivirus programs." Note: Please note that our icon contest is still running! So if you have an idea on how to rework this story's icon, read this.
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Member since:
2005-07-26
It's true that downloading something and executing it might take a little bit of skill in theory. Unfortunately there is still some work left, because certain programs make this hard:
In Nautilius, if you double-click a .pl file, it might run it using perl.. same thing goes with other poorly configured file browsers.
In Firefox if you goto an URL that points to some extension you might give it the right to install.. if you're a stupid user who wants to see dancing_bunny.xpi in action.
and so on...
Another case might be that you download and run a program you trust and then it does something you don't want it to. Even if you're in userspace this might affect your privacy and sniff up stuff like credit card numbers.
Saying that Linux/Unix is safe from this kind of stuff is wrong, but assuming that the user is smart enough to avoid it is more likely than for xp users.