this post was submitted on 22 Feb 2024
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Imagine needing an antivirus
This comment was made by Linux gang
Even Windows doesn't really even need a 3rd party anti-virus anymore. The built in windows defender has gotten so good as to really be all you need for active protection unless you're insanely stupid and keep bypassing it. Use Malwarebytes for deep file scans once in a blue moon, and you're golden.
I don’t even use windows defender. Never had any issues. (My windows PC is primarily for gaming)
Do you have windows 8, 10 or 11?
Defender has been on in the background this entire time and you don't even know it. It is on by default and incredibly hard to truly disable.
Windows 11. It’s not that hard to completely remove. I have also removed Bluetooth and lots of other non essential functions. There are plenty of tools on GitHub that can do it. You can also just use a custom ISO.
All of them use the wim_uninstall thing, right?
XP is best!
It’s been good since Windows 7. The reason Windows has so many updates is for security.
It's only good at detecting windows&office activation tools. I have never ever seen it detect anything other than those.
first party antivirus is still antivirus
Hate to tell you this, but Linux nor MacOS are safe without AV
It's just Windows, by far, has the largest share of active systems so everyone targets it. Both MacOS and Linux have their own share of bonafide viruses though
Hate to tell you this, but nuh-uh! My Linux server is just going through a phase where it likes to collect porn ads and share credit card info with Russia!
for Reeeeeeeeeeally small values of 'share'.
"Wait! There was Lion! And .. .. .. "
It's still not actually needed for experienced users though, I haven't had a virus in over 10 years, so it hasn't had anything to catch.
Boy oh boy did it freak the fuck out about the exe I compiled myself from a python script I wrote myself, though. Had to specifically exclude it from defender to stop it from quarantining it every time it ran. All it does is check to see if a link on a website has been updated since last look...
This is the main takeaway that people seem to be missing: follow good computer hygiene, and you'll be fine.
Keep your shit updated, and don't download/run things you don't trust. Keep an unintrusive anti-virus running in the background as a backup just in case there's a supply chain attack, but don't rely on it to make your decisions on whether to open a file or not.
golden rules of PC hygine:
don't use an admin account as your main account
if you haven't directly triggered it yourself, the answer to that pop-up is "no"
Imagine thinking you’re immune to malware
Nobody is immune to it, but it's a lot less common for sketchy websites to provide malware downloads specifically targeting Linux PCs. The market share is nonexistent, the average user is more technically inclined, and the desktop environment ecosystem is full of variations that make it difficult to develop a one-size-fits-all solution.
It simply isn't worth it for most malware creators to focus on Linux desktops. Servers are a different story, but that malware is planted by humans or automated intrustion tools.
That being said, none of this precludes stupidity. If somebody downloads
Oppenheimer-1080p.mkv.exeand opens it in WINE, you can bet your ass that the ransomware malware will do its job just fine.Don't download shady exes, run ublock origin, force https, use a vpn, and reroute your DNS lookups. It's super easy to not download viruses and malware.
I agreed with you up to the "use a vpn" part. That's just wasting money and adding extra steps for the sake of paranoia.
If you're using SSL/TLS and not blindly bypassing invalid certificate warnings, you're not going to have your device or accounts compromised by the hacker boogeyman.
My VPN saves me 100s of dollars a year I would otherwise be spending on subscription services.
You have a good reason to use a VPN: bypassing region restrictions (or piracy). The people subscribed to a VPN service for security reasons usually don't*.
* Excluding those living under a censorship heavy government.
Some VPNs advertise they stop malware so I get why they say that but you're right.
They hide your browsing from your ISP (and probably your government)
They hide your origin and substitute another for web sites.
I'd say a VPN is only useful to people engaging in crime, or things that look like crime and those buying services that are priced differently around the world
That provide no protection against things you might click on
There are far more uses for a VPN. For instance if I want to access my NAS while outside my home.
Sure, but that's not generally a thing the commercial VPNs offer, and I thought we were talking about commercial VPNs
But some VPNs do provide you a little protection on things you might click on. Ublock and not being a dummy will get you around most of that use but for general users it is more safe.
Sure, but that's not VPN action, it's routing or filtering
Sure but when I'm not on my network a VPN doing that is good.
Hasn’t a bunch of malware spyware and other malicious shit been found all over decades old Linux stuff the last couple months?
IIRC, that was more about auditing the "supply chain" of apps and Linux. Some college kids were purposefully trying to get malware on the mainline Linux repo and obviously got themselves banned from touching Linux.
Otherwise it's just been normal security vulnerability type stuff? There was also a long-existing bug found in a very common library recently, but that's very solidly in the normal flow of security research, the bug just happened to be sitting there a while.
Linux of course is a target and has malware. It'd be completely stupid of attackers to ignore Linux because the vast majority of servers run it. It's a readily available target with lots of goodies on those servers.
I don't think it was just some college kids, I could have sworn their professor was specifically getting his students to perform as bad actors to support some super-biased research papers he was trying to publish.
Yeah but this wasn't recent, this one was like 4 or 5 years ago unless it happened again. If I remember correctly it got the entire University's email address banned from contributing to the kernel
Oh yeah, I get what you're saying. Yeah, two completely separate instances. Although, from the sound of it, there are a surprising number of people who seem to think that sabotaging Linux and hacking Linux are the same thing. I mean, I guess a pirate can sail on any ship, right?
Yeah but antivirus software doesn't pick up zero days, which is what you should really be concerned about.
I had some Chinese radios a few years ago, they were proper radios that you could program for all sorts of stuff. I had the software on a USB stick, then plugged it in about 5 years later - pinged up with all sorts of viruses that weren't detected previously.
They don’t pick up anything that they don’t know about, so once the zero day is known the antivirus/malware can find and remove it I thought.
They don't catch zero-day exploits, as those are vulnerabilities in programs that were discovered to be used in the wild. They will eventually catch the malware dropped through those exploits, though.