Re: [opensuse] Who said Linux doesnot get Virus infections

On Tue, 7 Aug 2007, Clayton wrote:-

<snip>

This does not account for buffer overflow exploits etc...I seem to
remember one recently (in the past year) that would give you root
access to a remote machine... scary except that you had to be root
already to get into the state where the exploit could be triggered..
giving you root access to something you were already logged into as
root... so not much of an exploit.

If you can get a normal user to execute something that is able to use a
local root exploit, that users system could be very easily compromised.
All it would need is for whatever used the root exploit install a
root-kit, downloading whatever is needed as required, and the system can
end up in a similar state as a virus-infected Windows system.

However, all this is based upon the premise that you have a user[0] so
idiotic that they'd specifically save an attachment, make it executable,
actually open this executable file, and that the exploit it wishes to
exploit is actually present on that system. Any of these don't occur,
there will be no infection.

Of course, there's also those infections that occur without user
intervention, but those tend to come in through security holes in server
daemons which are unlikely to be running on a normal users desktop
system.


[0] Of which I'm absolutely certain there either are some right now, or
there will be some in the future.

Regards,
David Bolt

--
Member of Team Acorn checking nodes at 100 Mnodes/s: www.distributed.net
RISC OS 3.11 | SUSE 10.0 32bit | SUSE 10.1 32bit | openSUSE 10.2 32bit
RISC OS 3.6 | SUSE 10.0 64bit | SUSE 10.1 64bit | openSUSE 10.2 64bit
TOS 4.02 | SUSE 9.3 32bit | | openSUSE 10.3a6 32bit
--
To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxx
For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@xxxxxxxxxxxx

Relevant Pages

  • Re: user privledges
    ... > redhat 7.2 i created a user account for myself to use on a daily basis. ... > fare i have just been su - and entering the root pass. ... it started but would not install because i did ... sofware to /opt/musicmatch as a normal user. ...
    (comp.security.unix)
  • Re: jail() House Rock
    ... Think carefully about exactly what kind of privileges your clients get. ... normal user account on the main server, and root inside the jail. ...
    (FreeBSD-Security)
  • Re: [SLE] Firefox, fixed and broken again.... :-(
    ... >> through KDE as root but not as a normal user. ... But if it works for root, not for user, I ... I opened Firefox it opened fine. ... I then tried opening Firefox again - remember it ...
    (SuSE)
  • Re: GUI login screen.
    ... Well i think the best solution to get around this is to setup a normal user account... ... then edit the /etc/passwd file and set that person with root permissions so as soon as they login theyre automatically made root. ...
    (Debian-User)
  • Re: startx Fatal server error: Cannot open /dev/tty0
    ... > startx fails under your normal user login but starts normally under your ... the question become why root user ... can init the video device, ...
    (alt.os.linux.suse)