Anti-virus for FreeBSD

[Valeri Galtsev]

On Thu, March 24, 2016 10:38 am, Valeri Galtsev wrote:
>
> On Thu, March 24, 2016 10:18 am, Matthew Seaman wrote:
>> On 2016/03/24 14:25, Valeri Galtsev wrote:
>>> (Is anybody in a mood of correcting me on the part
>>> that we scan for viruses attacking something else not on MS products?
>>> Are
>>> there any? ;-)
>>
>> I believe that there is a growing corpus of Malware aimed at MacOS X,
>> IOs and Android nowadays.  Although nothing like as much as has been
>> aimed at various Windows versions over the years.  It's all down to how
>> common those OSes are and whether the malware can achieve any sort of
>> critical mass and whether it provides sufficient return for its authors.
>
> Do any of virus scanners scan for MacOS or Android aimed stuff?
>
>>
>> Of course, while FreeBSD is an unlikely target, it is certainly not
>> immune.  Nothing is.  It's just it doesn't usually pay to attack FreeBSD
>> machines because a) most FreeBSD users tend to pay more attention to
>> security than your average machine-herder, and b) even if you do develop
>> an interesting way of breaking into FreeBSD boxes,  there aren't enough
>> of them around to make them worthwhile as a target for recruiting into a
>> botnet or the like.
>>
>> Also, since FreeBSD is pretty uncommon as a desktop sysetm, attacks on
>> it that rely on end-users to click on things they shouldn't are pretty
>> futile.
>
> Yes, this is where the difference between [MS Windows] virus and UNIX worm
> shows (and I would add MacOS into UNIX band, not certain about Android, as
> I'm not sure to what extend android executes when it sees something it can
> execute). I probably should exclude Morris worm here though. Basically,
> Windows viruses exploit mostly MS Windows architecture flaws. MS itself
> warns that to run MS Windows safely you should have anti-virus software
> (this is the only system vendor that plainly admits their system can not
> be run safely with some 3rd party software).

"..._without_ 3rd party software" I intended to say... - my twitchy fingers!

>
> Thanks for your nice input, Matthew!
>
> Valeri
>
>> Not when there's all those poorly written PHP applications and
>> other network-exploitable code; a much more likely attack vector against
>> FreeBSD -- but those tend not to require anti-virus software to defend
>> against.
>>
>> 	Cheers,
>>
>> 	Matthew
>>
>>
>>
>
>
> ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
> Valeri Galtsev
> Sr System Administrator
> Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics
> Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics
> University of Chicago
> Phone: 773-702-4247
> ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Valeri Galtsev
Sr System Administrator
Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics
Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics
University of Chicago
Phone: 773-702-4247
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++