The old Symantec which is called something else now is buying Avast AV

[Unknown_K]

I think one of the first anti virus applications I used was Norton AV for DOS. Eventually they became Symantec in the 9x era and I quit using them for free third party apps like my current Avast.

Seems like the company that Symantec became is buying up Avast and I expect to be bombarded with advertisement for shit I don't need again.

 

[Chuck(G)]

Antivirus? What's that? (I run Linux)

 

[vwestlife]

Symantec acquired LifeLock in 2016, and then in 2019 Broadcom acquired Symantec and renamed its consumer division NortonLifeLock. Meanwhile, Avast acquired AVG in 2016. So now Norton, Avast, and AVG are all under the same ownership.

 

[Chuck(G)]

Well, to be blunt, the antivirus people have been really terrible when dealing with the ransomware epidemic.

 

[GiGaBiTe]

Antivirus? What's that? (I run Linux)

Linux is not exempt from malware/viruses/exploits.

The more mundane crapware that does things like change your search engine or inject ads doesn't really exist on Linux, but it's more than made up for in serious security faults and nasty malware/viruses.

With the increasing scrutiny on software and hardware the past decade, Linux has had plenty of nasty vulnerabilities in the kernel and SystemD rear their ugly head, some of which had existed for decades without anyone knowing. Plus other software that runs on Linux has had many nasty vulnerabilities found as well that were around for a very long time without anyone noticing.

 

[Chuck(G)]

So where are the Linux viruses?

 

[Mike Chambers]

Antivirus? What's that? (I run Linux)

I mostly run Windows and still don't know what Antivirus is. Still doing fine.

I don't like the system performance hit and frequent inconvenience of a false positive. Just exercise common sense on the internet and don't click every shiny "DOWNLOAD" button you see. Stay away from torrents and thebestfreewarez.ru and you'll be good.

I keep diligent backups just in case these days, but so far after 25 years of browsing the internet, I'm still fine. I do run a free Malwarebytes scan a couple times a year to be sure, but no always-on AV.

My 5150 has the Stoned virus though. :-o

Well, to be blunt, the antivirus people have been really terrible when dealing with the ransomware epidemic.

This is the only threat that really scares me a little. But again, diligent backups. Offline storage and the cloud. I'll recover if something happens.

 

[Mike Chambers]

So where are the Linux viruses?

We had an edge firewall at work running Debian about 5 years ago. It was also running an SSH server. We noticed the performance on it had slowed to an absolute crawl. Turns out it got exploited remotely and someone was using it to mine cryptocurrency. I'm sure they left other fun stuff on there to drop other badware later, too. Obviously, we nuked that system from orbit and started over after making sure they didn't do anything to the rest of our network. I guess we caught it in time.

 

[Chuck(G)]

I guess it depends on how things are set up, too. My systems implementing remote access are all restricted to intranet IP addresses. If one looked at even a couple minutes of incoming IP traffic, they'd probably be scared witless. I wonder how much compute power worldwide is dedicated to scanning for system vulnerabilities.

 

[vwestlife]

So where are the Linux viruses?

Most ransomware attacks are due to people clicking on rogue links in e-mails. Linux users need to be smarter than average due to the technical complexity of the operating system. Therefore, they may be less prone to ransomware attacks, simply due to them being more careful about what they do and don't click on in e-mails.

But don't let your guard down or take it for granted that you won't fall victim to it. For example, Jim Browning, one of YouTube's most popular anti-scammers, recently got fooled by a scammer into deleting his YouTube channel. Luckily he was able to get it recovered.

 

[Unknown_K]

You can get malware just by using google and clicking on a picture from a compromised site.

 

[Chuck(G)]

On Linux using a sandboxed browser?

 

[Eudimorphodon]

it was also running an SSH server.

Was the SSH server remotely compromised with an actual exploit, or did a bad guy manage to guess someone's terrible password? In 20 years I don't think I've witnessed the former in actual production but the latter certainly happens.

I've also seen exploits successfully installed on, for instance, webservers running buggy/neglected PHP code with SQL injection vulnerabilities, but that's not really "linux"-es' fault. On any multiuser/multitasking OS that has something analogous to "fork" a bad guy is going to be able leverage whatever bad software you're letting them touch to do something malicious.(*)

(This reminds of the possibly apocryphal story that back in the 1990's the US Army used to like using the "classic" Macintosh OS as web servers specifically because the OS was such an unstable mess of spaghetti it was almost impossible to meaningfully compromise it remotely. Crash it, sure, but you're not getting a shell.)

(*) Edit: Of course the depressing fact is that these days web browsers are essentially virtual machines for running all kinds of code and filled with hooks to reach outside of themselves so, sure, Linux at least *can* be a vector for "click on it and you're screwed" sorts of exploits. That's the world we live in. But this is where, frankly, being on the more obscure platform gives you a tiny bit of a backstop on top of whatever OS security layers you have sandboxing the nasty thing.

 

[Chuck(G)]

That's why I run my browser sandboxed and delete all cookies that weren't there at the start of session.

 

[NeXT]

Well, to be blunt, the antivirus people have been really terrible when dealing with the ransomware epidemic.

In general I have not had a virus issue that an AV program could address in at least a decade. Most of the petty viruses are now gone in place of mentioned ransomware or the usual malware which is financially more viable than USB autoplaying or email chained fluff that even Microsoft's own AV catches.