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To: Don Green who wrote (5911)	3/30/1999 4:05:00 AM
From: Edward Smyth	Respond to of 14451

Don Green wrote: >Tom, > >hackers enjoy a challenge, but also prefer to do it when it affects >the masses. > >MSFT may not be the biggest challenge but for sure Linux doesn't >affect the masses either. It depends upon how you count the number of users of each OS. In terms of what in on people's desktop machines, then linux is still quite small. But you are arguing that no Linux viri exist because the number of linux users is too small to make it worth the while of someone who is interested in causing trouble. Given all the linux and unix systems used in web servers, routers, telecomms in general, banking, industry, universities, military etc, the number of people who depend upon linux or unix in some way is vast, thus a linux/unix virus could cause enormous damage. >So what is the point.. The point is that Linux (or a UNIX) is much harder to infect with a computer virus. Of course there are lots of ways to cause trouble on a particular system, especially if simple precautions are not taken by the sys admin. However, with PC's and Macs, it is extremely easy to get a virus to transmit itself across networks (LANs and the internet in general) and thus infect a large number of machines in a very short time. Affecting multiple unix systems like this is very difficult. Even if you had a macro virus for a unix/linux application, it should only affect the account of the user that receives it and runs it (1). The rest of the system should be OK. Thus if you rely on computers for your business, or home use, it is better to use unix or linux and be more secure from attacks (2). Ed (1) IMHO one should NEVER run any macro, binary, screensaver etc received in e-mail. (2) And have a faster OS, that is more reliable, supports a much wider range of hardware, can be customized in GUI, filesystem etc, can support (on some hardware) 64-bit integers and large (>2 GB) amounts of memory per process, scales to thousands of CPUs, is available from more than one vendor, is based upon open, industry standards, ........