[vox-tech] Spyware For Linux?

[Bill Kendrick]

On Tue, Mar 15, 2005 at 10:46:15AM -0800, Jonathan Stickel wrote:
> Occasionally I 
> hear of it happening with power Linux users running all kinds of 
> internet services, but does it happen with home users?
> Can it happen if they don't use any network daemons?

Sure.  All sorts of apps have all sorts of bugs.  Konversation recently
had an interesting bug, which I forget off the top of my head.
I don't beleive it could lead to a /root/ compromise...  but then, how many
of us keep our private documents and tax files in the root account?
(Versus the normal user-level account we do our daily browsing with?)


> It bothers me that Fedora turns sshd on by default.
> A naive user could set a silly root password, and 
> they'll be cracked in a few hours.

Does it allow root to SSH in by default?  (I've seen setups which specifically
do /not/.)


> I kind of watch Gentoo security announcements.  Many of them deal with 
> denial of service (DOS) attacks where a program running as nonroot could 
> hang the computer.  How often does this happen?  I'm less concerned 
> about this one because I would notice right away and fix it.  A 
> comprised system can go undetected for awhile and mean lots of clean up 
> work.

Backup often.  (Eep!  I should talk!  I should go home and back up tonight!)

-bill!