Need for >4 core CPU

[Supershanks]

I wouldn't trust symantec to build a tower with these.

Exactly, makes me wonder if AMD linked up with AVG & got a more efficient product. With Norton involved you can't see it being hard.

Equivalent Performance = Intel/Symantec = 10 cores v AMD/AVG = 4 cores

[Rosaline]

The thing that *nix users have to be wary of isn't computer destroyign viruses, but being infected with a zombie. Vectors of attack do exist, and it's quite a surprise that there are not more infectious agents out there in the wild. A spambot doesn't need anything but normal user privileges, and most *nix users wrongly believe themselves to be safe.

I know people in both the *nix and AV industry, the above should not be a surprise to anyone.

[EtheAv8r]

Well I do pay for my AV, and I think it is worth it, and much better than the free ones.... it is of course NOD32 - lets me work safely with only two cores, and uses very little resource.

[Phil_P]

You know, if the Operating System had a decent level of security built in then stuff like that described in the original article wouldn't be needed in the first place.

[Phil_P]

A spambot doesn't need anything but normal user privileges, and most *nix users wrongly believe themselves to be safe.

Absolutely correct (you can't protect against user stupidity or ignorance), but it would also be extremely easy to remove too for the very same reasons. Now try removing a root-kitted spambot variant such as SpamThru from Windows... not quite so easy huh.

Restricted user accounts on Windows are an absolute joke - the only thing they restrict is the user whilst any well written exploit or virus will immediately gain escalated privileges and have free reign. Microsoft made a step forward on this with Vista but then took two steps back by allowing users to disable the feature if they found it annoying!

[EtheAv8r]

You mean Mac?

Only used by so few people, that no one has ever bothered to write a virus for it....

Not actually true.... Norton Antivirus started out life as a Mac procuct.... way back in the late 80's early 90's Symantec were a Mac sofoware company and their first big product was SAM - Symantec Antivirus for Macintosh... and there were lots of (relatively harmless but buggy causing bombs) of Mac viruses about. And there is Mac malware about now.... they just don't like to admit it! LOL

Just like Microsoft Office (Word, Excel and Powerpoint) appeared first on Mac, and beat the Windows product by about 3 years.... but in thos days it was Windows 3.1 and was unbelievalby poor compared to Mac OS 6, let alons Mac OS 7.

Here endeth the History lesson....

[aidanjt]

The thing that *nix users have to be wary of isn't computer destroyign viruses, but being infected with a zombie. Vectors of attack do exist, and it's quite a surprise that there are not more infectious agents out there in the wild. A spambot doesn't need anything but normal user privileges, and most *nix users wrongly believe themselves to be safe.

I know people in both the *nix and AV industry, the above should not be a surprise to anyone.

The difference is, you need to go out of your way to make your system exploitable (as in running pointless daemons out of the box that listen in on an external interface), and you need to never update those daemons and ignore security announcements, installing software from untrustworthy repos. You get where I'm going with this, right?

Otherwise the only possible attack vector is physical machine access.

[charleski]

you need to go out of your way to make your system exploitable (as in running pointless daemons out of the box that listen in on an external interface), and you need to never update those daemons and ignore security announcements, installing software from untrustworthy repos.

Let's say *NIX is widely embraced as a desktop OS by home users. What percentage do you think would do just what you describe?

[Rosaline]

What percentage of actual *nix admins now actually do all that?

[lodore]

any Operating system can get a virus or get exploited by a secuirty hole.
windows is targeted so much because so many people use it.
why would you bother to exploit a mac when there is more people using windows?
with linux and mac you just need to keep up with the patches.
with windows you need a multi layed defence since so many people try to exploit it.
but most of that can be stopped by using a browser that isnt Internet explorer and having careful surfing habits.
you can be perfectly safe on a windows OS by disabling the unsafe uneeded services and using a third party browser.
most of the patches from microsoft just patch one of the unsafe services.
so why not just set the unsafe services as disabled?
half the services in xp are uneeded for home users.
i only use an antivirus to protect my family when they use this pc.
i could get away without one.
lodore

[Butcher]

Wasn't the worlds first virus for unix too?

I think it pre-dated unix by a couple of years. There have been unix viruses though, it's hardly completely safe - you can rootkit a unix box about as easily as windows really.

[Agent]

I think it pre-dated unix by a couple of years. There have been unix viruses though, it's hardly completely safe - you can rootkit a unix box about as easily as windows really.

That depends on how competent the admin is though

[mroz]

Is there a correlation between competent & paranoid? I get the impression many admins would prefer not to have any users, not that that isn't an understandable desire

[aidanjt]

Let's say *NIX is widely embraced as a desktop OS by home users. What percentage do you think would do just what you describe?

Very, very few (percentile wise), most home users wouldn't know what Apache, PHP, and MySQL was if it jumped up and bit them in the arse, nevermind know how to configure them for them to even fork off.