Can anyone give me a heads up on what the security issues when running the live cd with a persistant home directory? I know that linux is more secure than windows, even more so when running an image file, and that there are few viruses or spyware for linux, but as more people start to use it they are bound to appear.

I looked at iptables but it is a little too heavy for a linux noob - in windows zonealarm and sygate had block all network traffic buttons and asked permission for each induvidual program to access the net; is there a quick and cheap way to do this with iptables, and can you get it to run automatically at startup?.

I was was reading another post which had people rolling there eyes at someone issuing chmod 777; I also did this when running a newer version of knoppix from the cd and couldnt save files. Do these permissions save with a home directory?

Final thing i am wondering what linux will and wont allow to run automatically, i.e. can it hide programs which run invisibly or through trojans if you gave those programs some kind of permission as root?

End to a long post but i`m kind of groping in the dark here, any help would be appreciated.