If you EVER had an FIRST Computer Virus......

[chaoskagami]

In the end, I think it's already hard enough to write a regular program that will reliably install and run on a broad range of desktop Linux systems without a considerable degree of user intervention. To write a program that will do so and then continue to propagate itself unnoticed and unaided would be a tall order. I would also say it's considerably easier on Linux for legitimate developers to unintentionally spread buggy, inadequately-tested software. But maybe that's just my opinion.

Friendly reminder that malware is not by definition self-replicating. That's a worm, which is a specific type of malware. There are very few worms because they require unpatched zero-days to really do any damage, and in this era of non-executable memory, stack canaries and ROP chains that's extremely difficult to perform reliably.

Also, arguably, it's both harder and easier to exploit open-source systems. Easier, because you can read the code and find an exploitable bug rather than having to reverse engineer code. Harder, because someone probably already read that code and fixed it before you could do anything with it.

 

[Kwyjor]

Friendly reminder that malware is not by definition self-replicating. That's a worm, which is a specific type of malware.

I remember viruses back in the day as copying themselves into different executables all over the hard drive and into floppy disk boot sectors. And occasionally doing horrible things in Outlook/Outlook Express.

But then, it would be pretty hard to viruses to spread that way anymore since no one is using bootable floppies or sharing random executables from their hard drives. I'm not sure people even use Outlook anymore all that much outside of mostly-secure business environments.

 

[thewannacryguy]

When I was younger I reformatted my computer, making it a few years behind on security patches. Without waiting for the automatic updates to install, I went on some adult websites. Adware got installed on my computer pretty quickly so I had to reformat it again. This was back on Windows XP which was less secure than Windows 10 is.