Do I need firewall and Anti virus/trojan software?

[Liam]

Hi can someone advise me if I need antivirus software and whether I should configure the inbuilt IP tables firewalling.

I use Kubuntu Dapper to connect to the Internet via an ADSL router and to connect to another PC via the LAN running windows?

Or by default does Kubuntu have enough security?

As My ADSL firewall runs NAT my real IP address is hidden from the real world so I am guessing that to hack my machine needs someone to hijack and existing IP connection out on to the Internet either thru a man in the middle attack or via getting 'phished' and connecting to an unsecure server.

Like most people I download stuff and open email attachments. Do I need to be running some anti-virus or anti-spam software?

Many thanks in advance.

[madberry]

Re: Do I need firewall and Anti virus/trojan software?

You're first defense is the ADSL firewall.

This will spark an interesting discussion about the need for having anti virus.

I happen to believe that at the moment there is no known virussus that will target Linux or Ubuntu in general. But the time could come that you do need anti virus. Personally I'll wait till there is reports about a virus on Ubuntu then I will look into installing anti virus.

[mad]Berry

[MoonRise]

Re: Do I need firewall and Anti virus/trojan software?

You're first defense is the ADSL firewall.

This will spark an interesting discussion about the need for having anti virus.

I happen to believe that at the moment there is no known virussus that will target Linux or Ubuntu in general. But the time could come that you do need anti virus. Personally I'll wait till there is reports about a virus on Ubuntu then I will look into installing anti virus.

[mad]Berry

Firewall to me is always the first line of defense, even for Linux. I agree with Madberry on the Anti-Virus. I'll wait. I had a chance to try Symantec's corporate anti-virus on Kubuntu. It really slowed it down like it does with Windows. So that was disappointing, but not surprising since that thing runs and scans all the time. Don't know if there are any others out there designed more for the Linux kernel. Let's hope we never have to worry about that.

[dlwright63]

Re: Do I need firewall and Anti virus/trojan software?

Im also a newbie and will be asking a few questions Im sure in there forums here, but I found this thread interesting because it hit upon a topic that i recently read an artical about. Do you need anti-virus? Well the artical I read basically said the same thing as madberry, that there is really not much chance ATM of "YOUR" system being hurt or corrupted by a virus. then it went on to say that even though your linux box cant really be hurt you can still get a virus in your email or someother contact and then unknowingly pass it along to others like in your adress book or to other comps (maybe a windows comp) on your network. So you can be used as a conduit for infecting others. So at this point I looked at a linux anti-virus online and saw that it was about $350 USD for a single machine for one year. Now maybe there are cheaper or even free linux anti-viruses somewhere online, like i said im a newbie and I really didnt check to far.

I personally will not be running any anti-virus on my Kubuntu install

On the other hand I tend to use email settings where I only download headers for email and if its from someone I dont know and didnt solicit then it gets deleted. If its from someone I know and it has an attachment then I dont fully download it until I contact this person and ask them why they sent me an attachment and what the heck is it.

[jglen490]

Re: Do I need firewall and Anti virus/trojan software?

There are some pretty good antivirus products targeted for Linux, such as clamav, and AVG also has a pretty good one. Most of the virus profiles that these look for are of the Windows variety, which is alright if you want to be a good neighbor .

Right now there are almost no known, effective malware in the wild for Linux. As Linux becomes a bigger target, that could change. Linux has functional structure that usually renders malware less effective, but who knows what tomorrow will bring. After all, it's just software, not magic. There are, in my opinion, Linux distros that will allow users to become "lazy" when it comes to security considerations. These distros tend to default to a single, root level user structure. There are some among these, what are again in my opinion, deviants that actually make it difficult to add non-root users. They justify that approach with the rationale that since they run in RAM, they are "fresh" upon every use. The problem being that they do allow disk writes (for downloaded software and various config files) and even have a disk install procedure.

But I digress. If you want to try some Linux antivirus products, there are some good ones out there. If you google "linux antivirus", you can link to Clamav, Panda, F-Prot, and some others. I would tend to stay away from some of the bigger corporate names like Symantec, simply because of the bloat effect.

[MoonRise]

Re: Do I need firewall and Anti virus/trojan software?

I would tend to stay away from some of the bigger corporate names like Symantec, simply because of the bloat effect.

As I said..Yep, that does occur!! I've used ClamAV before just to give it a try. It seemed to work well with Linux with no apparent "drain" on the system. I've since removed it only because I've reinstalled and that really wasn't on my "To-Do" list of re-installations

[Liam]

Re: Do I need firewall and Anti virus/trojan software?

Thanks for the great responses guys, thanks for raising a couple of issues I hadn't thought of.

Because I use download and pass along microsoft office files from time to time and I don't want to pass along virues between windows users.

I will try clamAV as I know that this was also incorporated into some commercial Linux based security products that I played with a few years ago - that seemed to work pretty well.

Many thanks guys.