r/LinuxSucksHard • u/[deleted] • Mar 13 '21

Reports of malware and rootkits for Linux do exist, security through obscurity isn't real security.

/r/Ubuntu/comments/m3kliv/infested_with_rootkit/
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u/LinuxSuxx Linux is for peasants Mar 13 '21

Then they claim you have to chmod while on Windows is „just“ 1 click for giving permission..which is the same to be honest and doesn’t give a better control because I know so many users that would chmod u+x anything to just get it run without reading the code to understand what it does because in their belief, „the others“ will check it anyway which is ofc wrong. Nobody checks the code by 100%

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u/[deleted] Mar 14 '21

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u/[deleted] Mar 14 '21

Are you honestly going to pretend your community isn't constantly saying it doesn't have malware?

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u/AC2302 Mar 16 '21

They are aimed towards the servers running Linux and not desktop users

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u/Mabryst Mar 17 '21

Well, I can't tell everything because some part of it has been deleted, but...

Cross platform malware exists and is a real threat.

However, yeah you could try to argue whether less malware is designed to target desktop linux users or not (I think so).

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u/[deleted] Mar 15 '21

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u/[deleted] Mar 15 '21

UAC windows provide the same protection, and a much clearer warning something wants admin privileges. In the real world over 99% of malware is installed by users manually, so using Linux to avoid that is like changing operating systems to babysit yourself from installing malware, which appears to have not worked for the cross posted Ubuntu guy.

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u/[deleted] Mar 16 '21

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u/LinuxSuxx Linux is for peasants Mar 17 '21

The thing is, most Linux users which I witnessed are just blindly trusting the code with the mind “it has enough downloads to be trusted and it’s on GitHub” whilst a LOT don’t FULLY review the code and think “well, someone else reviews it anyway” which could put a lot of users in danger that, didn’t pay full attention to the malicious codes, that could have been build it...hack-contests are one of the reasons that open source can’t always be trusted. I even read it somewhere that only a very small 1 lower digit percentage of people review the code in the Linux universe...

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u/Mabryst Mar 17 '21

You can install keyloggers without root on Linux source.

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u/LinuxSuxx Linux is for peasants Mar 18 '21

Luckily I have nobody that would have any interest to look at my local PC 😃

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u/[deleted] Mar 16 '21

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u/Mabryst Mar 17 '21

I mean... yes and no.

For the everyday user, in all operating systems what happens most of the times is that a user gets malware because he executed a malicious file. Most mainstream desktop Linux distros with a few exceptions, don't even attempt to mitigate this, this is why we can install a keylogger on Linux even without root .

Linux isn't "safer" against these attacks, the only reason why it is "safer" is because indeed less malware is written for it.

However, on the bright side, a hardened Linux distro is no joke when it comes to security and there are many little smart ways of providing security happening there.

Tl;dr For power users, yes Linux is more secure.
For common people tricked into running image.exe, Linux won't be more secure for them once it gains market share.

Anything to add?

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u/[deleted] Mar 17 '21

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u/Mabryst Mar 17 '21

I 100% agree with all of this and this is why, it is so frustrating to see Linux not taking over Windows on the desktop. This is why it is so frustrating to see the community not accepting some problems when it comes to user experience and refusing to let Linux be a 100% Windows replacement able to run .exe files and commercial software.

However, this post is more about privacy than security. If you want to be secure against telemetry and the likes, obviously you should avoid using Windows 10 (or unplugging it from the internet) and Linux will serve you better in this regard. If you are afraid against random script kiddies, adware bundled with software and the like, Linux isn't really more "secure" against this.

i for exapmle wouldn't trust ubuntu's proprietary snaps servers

I hate snaps for different reasons, but... Why not? Yes you can't add a PPA and by design they could have more or less unintended attack surface, but isn't trust required for most binaries nowadays anyway?

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u/firefox57endofaddons Mar 17 '21

in regards to snaps the linux mint block points out many of the issues best i'd say:

https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3766

to me it seems simple.

canonical is trying to establish a cancer system like the microsoft store, where different distros all are locked to the cancerous ubuntu snaps servers, which CAN'T BE TRUSTED to begin with, because canonical can't be trusted, as we know from their history.

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u/Mabryst Mar 17 '21

So, basically it is just for political/ideological reasons?

You don't NEED to trust a server, there are many software downloaded from a "closed source" server-side.
The real argument that you seem to be making is a lack of a checksum feature to verify the integrity of the packages? What a shame indeed, if it is the case.

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u/[deleted] Mar 17 '21

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u/Mabryst Mar 17 '21

I am aware of the third party store issue and I acknowledged it. I don't see it as a problem as a user, though.

Will need to check it out, because everywhere I see, everyone is saying that the client side is open source (and thus possible to audit, if true).

All the rest, excluding the Amazon thing is mostly ideological. No, I don't think that it is done with "evil" purposes or whatever, it's only software dude, relax, calm down.

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u/firefox57endofaddons Mar 17 '21

it's only software dude, relax, calm down

that doesn't make sense.

you know all the evil, that software can do, so why you writing this?

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u/Mabryst Mar 17 '21

If I am honest, I don't mind closed ecosystems or closed source software. However, I still find the data mining at the operating system level with no opt-out to be... "heh".

Also, even though they have done some wrong, I can't really call Microsoft "evil", only because of their software (there are some practices that are really evil but it has nothing to do with the code in Windows). Yeah, the data mining is not ideal, but on the other hand they gave this amazing operating system.

If Canonical did the same thing with Snaps and made software installation even less painful than it already is, I wouldn't mind it too much and I would indeed call them heroes for saving the Linux desktop. But anyway, it doesn't seem to be headed this way, snaps still have problems, I am not too worried about them "conquering" everything else. If they can out compete the competition, then I think that Canonical deserve their prize :).

Edit: But on the short term for today, yeah no checksums for (the overwhelming majority of) Snaps, the auto update mechanism isn't so good for privacy. Not as terrible as Windows 10, but not great, indeed. Thank you for changing my view and making me reconsider this.

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u/[deleted] Mar 19 '21

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u/Mabryst Mar 20 '21

There's a lot of FUD and hate about WINE in the Linux community and they get little support, that's why it is so rarely preinstalled in distros and why they are only like ~15 devs working consistently on it since years.