p3x.deWhat would be your distro of choice if you take the security with ease as the top priority
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With the recent windows 10 EoL news, I was able to move my dad over to Linux mint. But he does a lot of finance stuff. Long ago, Linux had a belief that desktop Linux are not the primary target for crackers but I don’t believe that true anymore since it’s getting significantly popular lately like Europe government migration over to Linux and Libreoffice.
My question would be , given my dad is just as careful on Linux as he has been on windows, would it be fine to do finance like banking and trading (not the fastest kind )?
If not, what would be your distro of choice for that? Even browsers (I installed Firefox and Edge from Microsoft website deb file)
I think most Linux distros will be fine. As of today desktop marketshare is still small, the governments mostly work within custom business applications. And to this date Linux malware and viruses for the desktop are practically unheard of. The common attacks are against the browsers, not the underlying operating system (so do timely updates and install an adblocker) or we’d expect phishing or phone scams and that’s against the human in front of the computer, again not the operating system. That makes me say they’re about all alright. Of course they’re not all equal. Immutable distros and sandboxing will help here. But the real deal is other countermeasures, like be aware how phishing works and try not to mix online banking and pirating games from shady websites. That belongs on separate user accounts or even installed operating systems. And use password managers, 2 factor authentication and these things. (And don’t use Edge, or some browser from some random third-party repository.)
This is dangerously false.
edit: I’m sorry to see I have disturbed a few people here, downvoting the truth without a comment. Explains a lot of contemporary politics, I think.
Can I get some list or a reference to educate myself? As far as I know it still holds true. There’s rootkits, a lot of old stuff and exploits of webservers or embedded devices, supply chain attacks towards developers and the one day the Mint ISO file got compromised. But I’m completely unaware of desktop computer malware with high risk or actually spreading?! And the list on Wikipedia seems to confirm what i said…
Okay, let’s assume for fun that there’s highly developed Linux malware that exclusively infects servers and leaves desktops alone. What exactly is a server? Is it a server as soon as a web server service is running? A DNS service? An SMTP service? Some of these are also included with Linux desktops.
But that’s not the point. There’s no specific “Linux server malware”. There’s Linux malware. It targets the Linux kernel (current data point), not any web stuff.
For example it’s something that has an Apache webserver installed and that Apache is accessible from outside… So the Apache exploit can do something. Do you have both conditions met on your laptop/desktop computer? I’m pretty sure that won’t be the case, and that’s the difference here. And yes, that’s specific.
Let me repeat my last paragraph, as you seem to have stopped reading after the first question mark:
You’re wrong. How would an Apache exploit “hack” your Steam or online banking app? That’s just not possible.
How would something that exploits the default password on a router infect my machine with a different password?
Malware uses specific attack vectors and specific vulnerabilities.
The “specific vulnerabilities” are usually in the Linux kernel, quite present on every single Linux system. Please follow the link I posted above. This is not about Apache or any other arbitrary user-facing software.
Thanks for the link. But that’s not a vulnerability or malware. It’s academic research how to hide malicious syscalls. But it can’t infect anyone’s computer. And there isn’t any vulnerability to let it in.
The RingReaper malware is literally a malware, using known vulnerabilities in the Linux kernel…?!
I’m sorry. Most I can find about “RingReaper” is that single blog post or people who rephrased it into their own articles. There seems to be zero information on how it spreads through the internet? And if anyone contracted RingReaper. And I can’t even discern how that’d get on someone’s computer unless they install it themselves (which is a form of malware, though not very pronounced on linux due to the distributions and central package repositories). There are no other methods highlighted in the post. And it can’t do privilege escalation either, just scan for other vulnerabilities. So is this a thing in reality and how can I find out? It seems like valid research to me, but I can’t see how it’s more than that… What I mean is, I can see how someone put the word “malware” in the title. But that in itself doesn’t really threaten my (or OP’s dad’s) computer.
It is one of several things in reality. Linux malware, spreading through the (mostly) same paths as Windows malware does, has been real for quite some time now.
Linux malware threatens Linux computers. It might be important to keep that in mind if you use Linux.
Can you explain how its mailware and spreads? The article doesn’t say anything except how it hides its calls.
Did you read the article? This Ringreaper thing is a method to hide something. It doesn’t have any means to infect a system. And it doesn’t really do anything except hide itself. It doesn’t delete your files, it doesn’t steal your passwords… It doesn’t spread… It’s not really what you think it is.
Edit: And congratulations for going back and appending your first comment with the wild claim you own the truth. I’m pretty sure people here downvote you because there’s almost no truth in what you spread here. I’d be willing to listen, but you don’t have any example to back it up. Instead you ramble on how servers are supposed to be desktop computers and attacks target the kernel instead of userspace applications, Windows and Linux have similar paths for malware… None of that is true. Sorry I’m not deliberately trying to be mean or hostile. But that’s how it is.
I guess the problem is not “the truth” but a claim without sources combined with a short communication style for a really complex matter.
Even the link you posted just reporte of one malware instead of the current state or perception of the problem. Like a general threat assessment instead of one incident.
This is dangerously unspecific.
https://linuxsecurity.com/features/ringreaper-linux-malware
Thank you!
I add this overview article https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/ethical-hacking/what-is-linux-malware/
I don’t think OP’s dad will host a misconfigured cloud service on their computer or set an insecure password, enable ssh and then also open a port in the router. Most attacks on that list are specific to how internet servers are set up. And well, insecure old embedded devices. And we in fact have those systems targeted regularly. My servers gets bombarded with malicious traffic trying to get in.
Yes. That is part of the insight. But the auto upgrade is a good practice for Desktop PCs, too.
And the article shows, that there are vectors and counter measures. Root kits are known for ages.
Sure. We get security vulnerabilities in Chrome and Firefox all the time. Sometimes the libraries handling images are vulnerable and that’s a big issue. And zero-days are a small fraction of actual attacks, most likely you’re getting hacked because of old, vulnerable software. So updates are the first priority. And backups is something people also frequently forget to set up. Or they think they don’t need them, but they do…
Good point.
To get back to the original question, I wouldn’t change the distro unless they are known to be slow with security updates. Anything debian and ubuntu based should work just fine.