Spend a couple minutes listening to a Linux user to talk about their favorite operating system and sooner or later you will hear mention his favorite feature: Linux is virus immune. Such a belief is generally accepted as the gospel in the community of open source. But is not it?
“That depends on what you mean by ‘virus immune,’” said Ben Greenbaum, manager of research at Symantec Security Response.
It explains, “There is no technical reason for that Linux is immune to viruses and infections. They happen but not often. ”
One of the biggest obstacles to malicious software into Linux is diversity, according to a research made by McAfee scientific, Marius van Oers. The viral code is designed to work in specific core operating systems and there are enough differences between the various clusters of Linux that is almost impossible that a malicious program to infect all variants of Linux in the same way. In addition, the market share of Linux is so small that the creators of malicious programs do not focus on that platform.
Conclusion: At this time, Linux users have very little to worry about viruses. Both Greenbaum and van Oers estimate that the current number of threats from malicious software for Linux is about 50 and most of them are demonstrations of concepts that do not represent danger. Compare that with the millions of threats already identified for Windows and Linux users might be entitled to make fun about Windows.
Even so, remember that Linux is not inherently immune to malicious software. As their popularity grows, so will the threats.
