According to Kaspersky Labs – I am vulnerable. They claim that Linux, BSD and MacOS boxes are open for attack via malicious code.

And I got paranoid.

Immediately I fired up Synaptic on my Linux Mint install and hunted for an Anti Virus program.

Apparently software developers do not share Kaspersky’s fear, as I could only find ClamAV as an option for my laptop (the others were aimed at mailservers etc.)

I installed it and ran a quick scan. Now this is not the first time that I had clamav running though. About a year ago I ran it on my laptop that was frequently connecting to my brother’s XP computer and I found Virusses.

Yes my Ubuntu laptop was infected.

Hold your horses though – the OS was not running virusses, I had infected files on my hard-drive. Tons of them. You see, when you are part of a network you share files with people, and in this case the infected files on my laptop were sent to my by my brother.

Interestingly enough I had regularly used these files but the viruses never, uhm… activated, for lack of a better term.

So, my Linux install was safe, although WIndows computers accessing the files on my samba share would be infected.

So what is the virus risk that comes with using Linux?

To you – very little.

To people accessing your files – about as much as it would be for any Windows user accessing files on any server or shared folder.

You see, viruses that actively bounce from computer to computer generally stop as soon as they get to a Linux box. In general their code that sends them along cannot activate on your linux machine and they then lie there, useless. A windows box that then sits on the same network as you will thus not be infected by your computer.

Viruses that payload on files do pose a threat though. Any Windows machine that downloads those files from your share will become infected by these files.

Why should you also install AV software on your Linux box?

Easy – social responsibility.

If you receive and send files/mails on a regular basis chances are that you could be passing on an infection. Scan your Linux box from time to time – it can only be a good excercise.

Especially since the viruses I found on my Laptop were not detected by Windows based AV programs.

Better safe than sorry!

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