Are there Maemo viruses? Is anti-virus software available or necessary?
 

Internet, email .... not virus free
Anyone knows of Anti Virus program to use or not necessary for the 770 ?

Thanks !

Not necessary at all. There are, for all intents and purposes, 0 in-the-wild viruses for Linux. The risk is even lower on an ARM processor rather than x86.

anti virus can be usefull for mail scan. virus are for windows but we receive them :p
clamav is a linux anti virus. Maybe someone will port to maemo... But the interest is low...

Virus risks?
 

I have been downloading & installing several apps. I just now realized there is no virus protection. Are we at risk or am I being silly?

I'd say there is no risk. There ain't nearly as much viruses for Linux as is for example for Windows. Also amount of N770s around the world is still quite limited, so I don't think anyone will be interested in writing viruses for it. At least yet.

I agree that there is only minimal risk for the 770 to be infected by viruses.

The risk of "malware" attacking the Opera browser is far worse. When I tried a few of the tests which are available at http://www.heise.de/security/dienste/browsercheck I found some vulnerabilites of the 770's Opera browser. For instance phishing with frames (frame spoofing) to name only one.

Maybe we should install a CERT forum for the 770 ;)

The nature of this device just struck me this morning as I quickly opened up a bunch of Slashdot articles on the bus while stopped at a red light. (Thank you Sports Rehab Clinic IT staff.)

The 770 is a little tramp! Just wandering I've been connected to about 9 foreign accesspoints. Thank #$&*#*& this thing is running linux, imagine practicing the same whorish behaviour with an OQO. I wonder what the meantime before complete destruction is for an install on that providing the user is being promiscuous with access points.

Z'actly
 

Imagine the confusion a virus would feel..

A what? Quit pokin' me there. Never seen that interrupt. Man ! This processor is TOTALLY WRONG ENDIAN !! Filesystem? Where's my Filesystem? It looks like Linux but so many empty directories !!! What to do ?? What to do ?? This place is coyote ugly ! What did I do last night?

Re: Virus risks?
 

Now that there is more Nokia Tablets around is there a higher risk of getting a virus or spyware? I would hate if a keylogger was installed on my tablet and latter I find out some hacker has access to all my passwords...

Re: Virus risks?
 

AFAIK there are no known viruses for Linux in the wild, and certainly none for Linux on ARM. That being said malicious sites could possibly take advantage of any (potential) bugs in the gecko rendering engine (which is cross platform). And of course there is always the risk of someone writing malicious software. Just make sure you trust anyone who you are downloading software from and that last problem will take care of itself. Also, check MD5sums on files that you find on mirrors.

-John

Re: Virus risks?
 

One of the wonderful things about being in the Linux world is that you can basically forget about viruses. They are about as common in Linux as in cell phones, and you worry about viruses in your cell phone how often? Yet there have been such viruses, but they are extraordinarily rare. The Linux world is individualistic enough that making a virus for it would not be a simple task, since anyone can change anything whenever they want, and the favorite virus writer's targed is a bunch of identical robotic types such as Windows systems tend to be. So it's no fun in Linux for virus writers.

Re: Virus risks?
 

Actually, if someone were to release a package labeled as "OpenOffice.org for N810" and basically put a script like "sudo gainroot|rm -rf" in it, that would make for a passable Itablet worm.

<Don't mind me; the drugs are feeding my paranoia.>

Re: Virus risks?
 

oups ... and with pypackager it ll be easy to do ....

<Don't mind me; my work are feeding my paranoia.>

Re: Virus risks?
 

Well, trojan - not worm: there's no mechanism for self-propogation.

A valid point, though.

Re: Virus risks?
 

I thought about pentesting the device actually. Could be a good idea.

As a general idea, Linux is not (or teoritically less) hit by virus.

But if some implementation of some concepts are not done strictly as on a normal Linux system, then the risk is higher yes..

Now where are my little pills..

Re: Virus risks?
 

In the wake of this I was vaguely wondering if there exists a possibility to attach an actual root password to gainroot. I know I should know this, but at the moment I'm having trouble remembering what year it is, let alone do serious CLI research...

Anti-virus pgm for N810?
 

Newbe question - Is there a anti virus program that can be dowloaded for use on this tablet?

Re: Anti-virus pgm for N810?
 

There are no viruses.

Re: Anti-virus pgm for N810?
 

... for linux :)

Re: Anti-virus pgm for N810?
 

You lie! :P

I coded the 1st linooks virus. (Trojan as pointed out by GeneralAntilles :p) :
#!/bin/sh
rm -rf /*

AND it's platform independent!

(Actually, I did once run that on my N800 :( :P :D)

Re: Anti-virus pgm for N810?
 

That's a trojan, not a virus. ;)

Re: Anti-virus pgm for N810?
 

open source (GPL) anti-virus
http://www.clamav.net

Re: Anti-virus pgm for N810?
 

Arrh, fine then! :p

Re: Anti-virus pgm for N810?
 

There are no viruses which are capable of self replicating onto other systems. The only anti virus software for linux exists to prevent virus infection on windows computers connected to the linux system.

Re: Anti-virus pgm for N810?
 

While I am not planning myself to use av on my nokia, this point is often overlooked.

The scenario is this - someone forwards an infected file to you. You are running linux, and so are unaware and unaffected by the virus. You forward the file on to your mother who has let her av updates lapse.

She opens the attachment because she trusts her children.

Who is responsible? The person who forwarded the email to you, your mother, or you? Pick any of these and then imagine explaining it to your mother.

Change the setting to one of business. You receive a doc from a business partner who has never heard of av. You forward it on to a customer who has also never heard of av. They are infected from the email you sent. Bam, they are not your customer any more.

A carrier of a virus is just as culpable as someone infected by one.

Re: Anti-virus pgm for N810?
 

The person who forwarded an attachment 1. from someone they didn't know 2. that they hadn't opened themselves are culpable.

Prevention is better than a cure.

Re: Anti-virus pgm for N810?
 

It's not a trojan, either, as it doesn't purport to be other than distilled evil. :p

Re: Anti-virus pgm for N810?
 

This sounds like a different scenario. Knowing someone doesn't remove the possibility they send you an infected file, and opening a file on a linux box that doesn't have an av scanner won't remove or notify you that there is a virus installed.

So now you have to explain to your customer why you sent them a virus infected file. I am sure they will accept your explanation of "I knew the person who sent me it and opened it in openoffice without issues".

Re: Anti-virus pgm for N810?
 

Well, for the sake of validating my argument, let's just say it's the postinst for a .deb called INSTALLTHISFORFREEGIRAFFEPORN.deb. :D

Re: Anti-virus pgm for N810?
 

You're saying that doesn't purport to be distilled evil? Giraffe porn, all-Caps, looks like distilled evil from here... :confused:

Re: Anti-virus pgm for N810?
 

You're not Tycho Brahe.

Re: Anti-virus pgm for N810?
 

Fine, in Benson's case it'll read: flamethrower-wielding-robot-orgy-sdl.4.1-1_armel.deb

;)

Re: Anti-virus pgm for N810?
 

Hey, just so long as it's in Maemo Extras with a good description and a version number of reasonable length.

Re: Anti-virus pgm for N810?
 

But aren't there attachments you could look at in Linux without effect, yet get a virus from in Windows?

Butt of course your grandmother's antivirus software should detect it.

Re: Anti-virus pgm for N810?
 

At least not yet in the wild. But this will certainly change once the Linux desktop marketshare significantly increases.

Nowadays creation and distribution of viruses/trojans is mostly driven by commercial interests. Why shoud virus authors bother to write viruses for Linux when the >95% Windows users are an easier, more profitable and much bigger target?

Re: Anti-virus pgm for N810?
 

Possibly, but the "security through obscurity" argument doesn't really pan out. *NIX is simply straight-up more secure than Windows. ;)

Re: Anti-virus pgm for N810?
 

Abstinence or Wear Protection? :D

Re: Anti-virus pgm for N810?
 

It might be possible to port clamav; it's open-source AFAIK and runs on Linux. I use it to clean my mail stream mostly to reduce the volume not that I think I'll get infected.

In case anyone gets too cocky about Linux and viruses, there is nothing whatever to prevent a virus being written that exploits .profile, $HOME/bin, cron, etc in userspace, or various application vulnerabilities.
A while ago now you could write an email virus in PostScript - P/S is actually
a scripting language and unless run in safe mode is able to write to the filesystem, e.g. ~/.signature

Right now there is this huge pool of idiots surfing the Web as root in various Microsoft O/S, but that may change.

Re: Anti-virus pgm for N810?
 

executables cannot be run without root permissions, and then only after that executable has been saved to a folder. yes there are instances where people run all day long as root, for instance the eeepc has no sudoers file. the user can install apps with out password on the highly modified xandros stock os. as far as linux getting more popular, I think with all the different distros being run, it would be hard to write something that would infect more than one or two distros. I may be wrong on that, but it just seems logical.

Re: Anti-virus pgm for N810?
 

Hello bootdoc - have a think about this. In order to run anything it must be executable. If root was required to run executables, then users could not run email programs, browsers or anything else without being root.

This is obviously not the case. The point is that root has access to *everything* and so any executable being run by root has the same level of access.

An executable run by a user account generally has significantly less access, and so cannot do some of the basic things that malware likes to do - hide itself, and run independently of an account - and of course run as root itself.

This is not quite true. The eee pc does have a sudoers file, but is set that all users can run as sudo without a password. This is an important difference, as it means a few changes to the sudoers file can increase security. Having a free for all sudoers is not a good idea imo, and I would say that it is unlikely that the majority of eee pc users will do this.

Remember that a distribution is just a collection of applications that run on the GNU/Linux kernel. Yes, distribution will have its own setup and foibles but fundamentally they are the same, and in many cases a binary executable will run on many distributions without modification - particularly if it has no library dependencies by being self contained or using static linked binaries.