Antivirus in Linux ?

[Fabio7891]

Hi everybody !

I have found this antivirus online: https://www.comodo.com/home/internet-se ... -linux.php

Is it useful install an antivirus on Linux environment ?

If Linux is open source, so every kind of threat can be fastly solved, why antiviruses exist also here ?

[kukamuumuka]

Antiviruses decreases safety, because they have administrative privileges, and you do not know what they do and send to their servers.
https://sites.google.com/site/easylinux ... t/security

Antivirus introduces a dangerous vulnerability
Furthermore, antivirus software sometimes even actively endangers your system: AV software itself is currently being attacked more and more. Because it has by definition high permissions on the system and because it's often inadequately protected against hacking.... This makes AV software an ideal target for hackers.

[JoeFootball]

... why antiviruses exist also here ?

Are you surprised that a company which sells antivirus software says that you need it?

Regardless, read this from the Easy Linux Tips Project.

Joe

[Hmfan]

If you are really concerned about it, I wouldn't go with Comodo, Their products are geared toward modern equipment and constantly programmed to use more and more resources. Look into ClamAV within the repositories. It's way lighter and will still catch viruses. Typically though if a virus is actually targeted at Linux then it, in most cases, will require being installed by the end user since the typical applications do not run as root. Or if they run at the user level, then it will not be able to get to the standard root and the underlying system will be safe while the user level is effected by whatever intention the virus was designed for. Now keep in mind, that is for Linux Viruses... there are plenty of cross platform viruses available that can infect regardless of What OS you run.

I have used ClamAV for a lot of different things. One was to knock out this virus that knocked out the mainstream AV program that was on this friend's computer. The virus really made a mess of things, but with ClamAV it cleaned it up, then it was just a matter of fixing the Windows Registry entries that the virus messed with. Though it would have been far easier to just do the three R's. Reboot, Reformat, Reinstall.

Really a good use though for an Antivirus in a Linux computer (or a flash drive with a live Linux and antivirus program installed) is to make it capable of clearing files for use in a more vulnerable computer or for cleaning the hard drive of an infected computer. just putting that out there.

As for is Comodo any good. I will leave you with this thought. On a Windows computer. Comodo is an adware based Antivirus/Firewall solution. It spams the end user with lots of messages that deal with upgrading to a paid plan. So, what do they have to gain from giving "free" anything to a smaller group of computer users?

And really everyone has the best point here, For average user. antivirus isn't needed.

[Hoser Rob]

I know guys who've been using Linux on their machines for 25 years. From when everything was like Gentoo, i.e. to install you got a minimal bootstrap loader and a bunch of compiler libs, and you had to compile and build it all. None of them has ever had a Linux AV program installed. You don't need it.

[WharfRat]

You don't need it.

Totally agree

[Fabio7891]

Thank you to everybody for your explanation !

Really precious !

Just a question... seeing that antiviruses are useless here, how can I see if my computer has got a malware ?
and how to delete it ?

[Neil Edmond]

What make you suspect there is malware on your computer? What symptoms are you experiencing?

[WharfRat]

If there is a process running that did not come from the repos with apt-get or dpkg, the following line will show it

cat /var/lib/dpkg/info/*.list > /tmp/listin ; ls -F /proc/*/exe|sed s'/@//1' |xargs -l readlink | grep -vxFf /tmp/listin; rm /tmp/listin

If you get no results that's good

[Fabio7891]

Thank you again !

[phd21]

Hi "Fabio7891",

I would recommend (have recommended) to any Linux user to create a bootable CD/DVD of one of the reliable AntiVirus AntiMalware rescue discs from Kaspersky, Avira, Dr. Web, etc... and boot to that to check your system.

Previous post - Need for an antivirus.?
viewtopic.php?f=90&t=238726&hilit=virus+maldet


Hope this helps ...

[bob466]

I wish I had a dollar for every time this question is asked. Windows is full of Viruses Ransomware and Malware but not Linux...Anti-virus software is big money...I think Microsoft could make Windows as secure as Linux but they choose not to...I wonder why...$$$$ maybe.

[jimallyn]

I know guys who've been using Linux on their machines for 25 years. ... None of them has ever had a Linux AV program installed. You don't need it.

Only 15 years in my case. Never had an antivirus installed, and never been infected with any virus or other malware. Nor has any Linux user I know, and since I have been active on Linux forums the whole time I have been using Linux, that would take in a lot of people. Thousands.

[hcentaur13]

Even 4 different malware scanners are unable to find more than 76% of already known malware and not 1 of them is able to find 100% of inknown ones. So using antimalware software does give 100% FALSE security and opens new gates to malware.

The ony protection you get is: switch on brain 1.0 before switching on your computer. Switch on turbo in your brain before reading email, news, http://WWW. Don't click around on attachments and WEB sites. Don't trust links.