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List:       opensuse
Subject:    Re: [opensuse]  Re: A BIG "show stopper" for openSUSE at the corporate
From:       James Knott <james.knott () rogers ! com>
Date:       2008-07-08 18:38:44
Message-ID: 4873B434.1050206 () rogers ! com
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Carlos E. R. wrote:
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> 
> 
> The Tuesday 2008-07-08 at 13:42 -0400, James Knott wrote:
> 
>> FWIW, one thing I would like to scan is USB external drives.  Recently 
>> I plugged my USB flash drive into a customer's computer and wound up 
>> with a virus on it.  Many years ago, floppies were a common way of 
>> spreading a virus.  Now USB drives fill that role.
> 
> But surely, that virus was not propagated by the linux machine, and it 
> probably came from another windows machine.

Quite so, but that drive gets plugged into Windows boxes (I use it for 
work).  It included an autorun.inf file, so it would run when that drive 
was plugged into another Windows box.  ClamAV on my Linux box found it.

> 
> I met the first IBM PC virus when I was a student somewhere in the 
> eighties. A dancing ball. There were two viruses then, one a boot sector 
> virus, another attached itself to the end of executables. I killed them 
> with my "bare hands", I had no antivirus, not invented. I used msdos 
> debugger and pctools. Things have changed.

I once got a boot sector virus from a night school computer, via a 
floppy disk.  Fortunately, IBM AV caught it.  My computer was running 
OS/2 then and the boot sector was about the only way in for a virus.
> 
> I was never infected. Not then, not ever since. And I have never 
> infected anyone.
> 
> And since I use Linux, hundreds of virus have come my way in email. I 
> have never propagated any of them, I have never been affected. I don't 
> even have to think about them.
> 
> It is not that difficult.


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