Malware protection and Linux?

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SyncroScales

SyncroScales

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Hello.

I was reading some things about Linux. It seems some distributions of it do not have malware protection. Is this true? Any recommendations?

I would be interested in Malware protection, VPN encryption and other measures to keep my computer safe if I install Linux.

Thanks for the info.
 
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ex_bubblehead
Linux by it's very design is more secure 'out of the box' than Windows. Yes, there are viruses and malware that affect Linux but they are very rare, I've only encountered a single instance in over 20 years of *nix use. Most malware uses IE as a vector, and, since that doesn't exist in the *nix world, that eliminates the majority of your concerns. Running on a regular account (NEVER run as root) will also restrict any foul play to only what that account has permissions on and not the system as a whole as in Windows, where people tend to run with admin level accounts routinely. Now, if you intend to share files and executables between systems then yes, you need protection, primarily to protect the Windows system. For that you can use...
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SyncroScales

SyncroScales

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Even though some people don't bother to make viruses for Linux, there have been problems. And it is important to have protection. I really don't end up looking at things that are unsafe or have malware online. I look for some unavailable music, social media videos, news, etc.

BUT since I look at independent artists, smaller labels or that type of social media, occasionally I get messages and blocked by malware protection from these web-sites. Random attacks are a potential problem.

I also have been dealing with trying to data recover someones stuff and re-install an Operating system for someone else the past few months. I will eventually install Linux for these people and not deal with Windows Update/7/8/10. I learned a lot, but that data seems to be inaccessible and will not happen again.
 
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ex_bubblehead

ex_bubblehead

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Linux by it's very design is more secure 'out of the box' than Windows. Yes, there are viruses and malware that affect Linux but they are very rare, I've only encountered a single instance in over 20 years of *nix use. Most malware uses IE as a vector, and, since that doesn't exist in the *nix world, that eliminates the majority of your concerns. Running on a regular account (NEVER run as root) will also restrict any foul play to only what that account has permissions on and not the system as a whole as in Windows, where people tend to run with admin level accounts routinely. Now, if you intend to share files and executables between systems then yes, you need protection, primarily to protect the Windows system. For that you can use something like ClamAV on the Linux side to scan/clean files before making them available to the Windows side.

Now, this is only a sample of one, but I periodically take one of my Linux machines running the latest Firefox and Chrome and visit every malware vector known to me just to test. Haven't had a single problem to date. However, I don't share files between systems.
 
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esco_sid

esco_sid

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May 11, 2012
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I still stand by what i said in all my years of using linux iv never encountered a virus there are so many forks of linux that it is very hard to make malaware that would actually work if you are still paranoid i guess you can just download https://www.clamav.net/
 
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SyncroScales

SyncroScales

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I'll read whatever everyone can recommend. There is a possibility that I will have a dual-boot system. So there will be files being shared and accessed by both operating systems.

Thank you.
 
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skittle

skittle

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Anti malware tools are simply a product of windows program install model where you download/install stuff from random untrusted sources.

On linux it's very easy. All software you want Only download /install things from your distrobution package manager, which are cryptographically signed and maybe use SElinux and/or firejail or other sandboxing tool. Other than that just be sure to keep your system up to date, which also happens to be much easier than windows.

Malware written for windows will not run on linux. However a malacious file downloaded on linux can be shared to a windows machine and thus run there. Clamav is good free opensource Antivirus amd available in most distrobutions repository.
 
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SyncroScales

SyncroScales

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Sandboxing and Virtual machines. Linux mentions this a lot. I understand the idea of virtual machines and emulators.

But what is Sandboxing? It seems to contain certain applications or be another type of firewall against intrusions?

I can read wikipedia about what it is, but what are ideas of sandboxing being used? How effective is it?
 
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skittle

skittle

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Realistically for normal people a combination of Firefox+NoScript+adblock will be enough.

sandboxing software can only interact with things within the sandbox environment. Any malicious code cannot not touch the important things in the computer outside of this sandbox enviorment.

firejail is a popular tool for sandboxing, easy to configure/use, and available for most distrobutions.
https://firejail.wordpress.com/
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Firejail

Something like QubesOS takes this a step further and everything is sandboxed. Snowden uses it so I guess you could say its reasonably secure.
https://www.qubes-os.org
 
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