Arch Linux

ancleessen4

Member

From: Luxembourg

Registered: 2009-11-22

Posts: 121

Website

Software anti-virus/software firewall inputs

I have a hardware firewall on my router.
Do I need to consider an anti-virus / software firewall with Arch (or Linux in general).
From the reading I have done so far;

1. If I do not have any MS Windows partition/dual boot Windows then this would point to not requiring an anti-virus.
2. From what I read there are no Linux viruses in the wild (??)
3. I have run Linux with no such software for a few years now and not experienced any issues AT ALL-am I being complacent?

How many people here use such software?
Your inputs would be much appreciated.

Leonid.I

Member

From: Aethyr

Registered: 2009-03-22

Posts: 999

Re: Software anti-virus/software firewall inputs

I have a hardware firewall on my router.
Do I need to consider an anti-virus / software firewall with Arch (or Linux in general).
From the reading I have done so far;

1. If I do not have any MS Windows partition/dual boot Windows then this would point to not requiring an anti-virus.
2. From what I read there are no Linux viruses in the wild (??)
3. I have run Linux with no such software for a few years now and not experienced any issues AT ALL-am I being complacent?

How many people here use such software?
Your inputs would be much appreciated.

The question, what is a virus? Is it a rootkit, a "rm -fr /" type of malicious script?

All in all, it depends on your needs and practices. Security starts from the bottom: proper permissions, user limits, fs mount options, etc.

1 & 2) Viri under Windows are not that bad actually. A properly configured Windows installation does not require an AV software (contrary to what they say)... unfortunately very few people know their way around windows Viri under Linux are like mafia -- they do not exists until you encounter one.
3) Nevertheless, there is a whole stack of security software, which could be useful even on a workstation, such as rkhunter and chrootkit for rootkits, tripwire for intrusion detection, etc.

Personally, I use rkhunter through cron semi-weekly, restricted memory/processes access for all users, no tty is accessible for root, and logging+logging+logging for debug/control purposes.

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Arch Linux is more than just GNU/Linux -- it's an adventure
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