Antivirus Software for Linux?

**aravind** · 11-11-2003, 05:57 AM

Hi,

Is Norton Antivirus / McAfee compatible with Knoppix? If not, which other package is best for Knoppix?

**Stephen** · 11-11-2003, 06:23 AM

Originally Posted by aravind

Hi,

Is Norton Antivirus / McAfee compatible with Knoppix? If not, which other package is best for Knoppix?

You do not need anti-virus software for Linux that's a windows problem.

**Hunkah** · 11-11-2003, 07:29 AM

Even if it is a windows only problem, there are times that a version for linux would be great... like say if you couldn't boot into windows and wanted to do a virus scan and git rid of some crittas, then knoppix would be the best tool for the job raite?!!!

**Henk Poley** · 11-11-2003, 09:33 AM

Saying it is a pure Microsoft Windows problem is almost bullshit, but it is about 99% true. non-Windows viruseses are very rare.

There are virusscanners that run under Linux though. They mostly scan for Window viruses. This (obvious) Google search gives you a nice list:

http://www.google.com/search?&q=linu...rus+scanner%22

**Stephen** · 11-11-2003, 10:22 AM

Originally Posted by Henk Poley

Saying it is a pure Microsoft Windows problem is almost bullshit, but it is about 99% true. non-Windows viruseses are very rare.

Maybe you should add the extra 5 9's on there (as in the uptime on a linux/unix system for example) eg. 99.99999% with probably more 9's on the end for the extent of windows problem as compared to any possible "problems" with linux.

**Hunkah** · 11-11-2003, 10:24 AM

Yah, well my dad can beat up your linux!

**Stephen** · 11-11-2003, 10:32 AM

Originally Posted by Hunkah

Yah, well my dad can beat up your linux!

Just goes to show never feed the trolls

**Henk Poley** · 11-11-2003, 11:59 AM

Sorry for the "dumb statistics". I should probably have said that all the in-the-wild virusses (you know, virusses that are actually spread right now) for anything non-windows is currently 0. And as you hopefully know that number is more like 10 for windows, if you only count very common virusses (millions of hosts infected), and a couple of hundreds if you also count virusses that are still spread but less common. Most of the latter kind are the highly virulent virusses like Code Red, Blaster/LoveSan, etc.

Sometimes there is a virus that infects for example Linux hosts, as far as I know the last time that has happened on a 'major' scale (couple of thousands of hosts infected) was with some Suse 6.x version (we are talking somewhere around 1999) that ran a vulnerable service (ftp?) that was only active when you said you wanted a fileserver (opt-in).

Sometimes saying "99%" is easier than all this chitchat... :-/

**buxus** · 11-11-2003, 01:08 PM

F-Prot

http://www.f-prot.com/

knx-live-inst_0.1-3.tar.gz

http://www.computer-ag.de/download/k...t_0.1-3.tar.gz

F.Franz' `knx-live-inst.sh' is an utility helps installing some programs (also F-Plot) into $HOME.

**monkeyman** · 11-11-2003, 01:20 PM

Excellent advice, buxus. I would just add that because an infected file can't infect you doesn't mean that the infection disappears. Passing an infection on to your momz who uses Win9x would not make you a hero, if you know what I mean.