April 24th, 2006
Malware for Linux Doubled in 2005
By Jimmy Daniels
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews
As more and more people use Linux, the number of malicious threats against it grows as well, on Friday Kaspersky Labs released the results of its database analysis for 2005, and has reported that the number of malware targeting Linux has doubled to 863 pieces compared with 422 in 2004. Windows had over 11,000 in the last of 2005 alone. But an interesting note in the article said to watch Apple as the biggest alternate target to Windows.
Although the number of malicious threats against the open-source Linux operating system doubled in 2005 over the previous year, a security company said Friday, it’s users of Apple Computer’s Mac OS X who should be afraid of the future.
“Apple gives even more scope for development and malware evolution,” said Sapronov in his report. “The move to intel processors may be revolutionary.”
Nor should Apple users continue to delude themselves that the Mac operating system is invulnerable to the kind of attacks common in the Windows world.
“The [Mac] operating system developers have also made errors. Over the past few weeks, we’ve seen two proof of concept worms for OS X, and these clearly illustrate errors in the system architecture,” said Sapronov, referring to such exploits as the zero-day bug uncovered in February. Source: Yahoo.
We Say: It doesn’t really matter what OS you are using, sometime, somewhere and somehow someone will try to sneak something onto your system to make some money off of you. But, man, over 11,000 for Windows in 6 months is definitely going to take awhile to beat. 
Scott says:
Of course it’s no great surprise that an anti-virus company publishes a study that says that the virus threat is increasing. I only worry about anti-virus on Linux because I’m also running WINE and so I am in fact exposed, in a limited way, to some Windows virii.
Nothing is 100% safe, but so far I think it’s much ado about nothing. If you’re really worried, go download ClamAV.
April 24th, 2006 at 2:23 pm
Anonymous says:
Malware for Linux Doubled in 2005
More and more threats are beginning to be released for Linux as the operating system begins gaining more steam on the desktop battleground.
April 24th, 2006 at 5:19 pm
Lockergnome's IT Professionals says:
Malware For Linux Doubled In 2005
Jimmy Daniels of RealTechNews writes: As more and more people use Linux, the number of malicious threats against it grows as well. On Friday Kaspersky Labs released the results of its database analysis for 2005, and has reported that the…
April 24th, 2006 at 5:38 pm
Tim says:
Hardware matters too: many now run Linux on IBM z/series mainframes. Since the instruction set is very different from the Intel machines, script-kiddies can’t just send you binary payloads. Macro-based viruses still work I’m sure; as will the “Jethro Bodine” virus (called many other names):
I ain’t got no computer,
so this virus works on that thar honor system.
Please forward it to everyone you know, then
delete all the files on your hard drive.
Thank you, thank you very much.
April 24th, 2006 at 7:29 pm