(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

After surfing the forums a bit, i saw that i was not the only noob wondering about the necessity of an anti virus... I saw that, from this and other sites, that i don't need one. I never really contemplated it, but i can see now that, since the majority of malware and viruses are directed at the highest amount of victims, then common sense says that Windows would be the prime target. So... what DO i need to be aware of? I saw a post say Puppy has never had a problem with being hacked or viruses/malware... Is this true? Do Linux viruses work differently than Windows viruses? Or is this something that will become apparent to me as i master the command line?

never mind... i have found info on this!!!

Thanks for letting us know what the answer to your question was.

Scrappy Doo wrote:After surfing the forums a bit, i saw that i was not the only noob wondering about the necessity of an anti virus... I saw that, from this and other sites, that i don't need one. I never really contemplated it, but i can see now that, since the majority of malware and viruses are directed at the highest amount of victims, then common sense says that Windows would be the prime target. So... what DO i need to be aware of? I saw a post say Puppy has never had a problem with being hacked or viruses/malware... Is this true? Do Linux viruses work differently than Windows viruses? Or is this something that will become apparent to me as i master the command line?

Uhmmm, dear youngin', hate to break this to you, Linux is just as dangerous as the Redmond gang's OS, or the Cuppertino gang's OS, or anyone's OS.

That includes any OS from this forum.

It includes software from anyone, anywhere, for that matter.

Pappy always said, believe only half of what you see with your own eyes, and nothing of what you read and/or hear, and teach yourself (if possible) to verify as much as you can.


Be safe out there and don't lull yourself into thinking one computer code creation (i.e. Linux OSes) is inherently safer than any other because, i.e., the so-called attack-surface (user base) is sooooo much smaller.

Bad, very bad, ethos to live by.

In other words, Master Belham is telling you to suspect everyone & everything, believe nothing, question everything (at least twice).....and enrol yourself as a fully-paid-up member of the "Paranoia & Tin-foil hat Brigade" at your earliest possible convenience..... (Every forum's got 'em.... *sigh*)

We luv ya really, B..!!

(If ya give in to it, the PTFH Brigade will have you doubting your own senses before very much time has passed. An' I don't care if they do think I'm cracked; I've got nothing to hide, and nothing worth nicking, either - data-wise or money-wise. I have a current account that won't allow an overdraft (most of the time it's empty, anyway), and ditto for my savings a/c. (I've never yet heard of a savings account that will permit you to withdraw what you never put in to start with, in any case.)

In almost 6 years of using Puppy, I've never yet had an issue of any kind with malware/adware/spyware, etc, etc. P'raps I've just got the 'luck of the Irish'.....and maybe, just maybe, it's due to run out. We'll see..!)

------------------------------

@ Scrappy Doo:-

If you're coming from Windows, then like every other Windows user out there, you'll have had it drummed into you, from day one, about the need for antivirus/antimalware/anti-this, that & everything else.....IF you want to remain safe.

(If you're unlucky, you'll have experienced it for yourself... *ouch*)

It's perfectly natural to want to know the requirements/necessity for such items when moving to another platform. You're not the first to ask this.....and ya sure as hell won't be the last.


Mike.

I can tell you in all the years I've used Linux and all the years using Puppy Linux I've never had malware or a virus infect any of the many many machines I've run over the decades.

Not even the Puppy Linux OS's running active web servers that have been exposed to the Internet for 9 years now have had any breech.
Call it luck or call it good configuration and using Hiawatha the most secure web server in the world but the fact is with everyday use and even with exotic network craziness nothing has happened that I didn't cause myself

bottom line = you'll be Okay

rockedge wrote:I can tell you in all the years I've used Linux and all the years using Puppy Linux I've never had malware or a virus infect any of the many many machines I've run over the decades.

Not even the Puppy Linux OS's running active web servers that have been exposed to the Internet for 9 years now have had any breech.
Call it luck or call it good configuration and using Hiawatha the most secure web server in the world but the fact is with everyday use and even with exotic network craziness nothing has happened that I didn't cause myself

bottom line = you'll be Okay

^^^ +1!!


Mike.

My Puppies sit behind two firewalls, the encrypted firewall of my router and Puppy's built in. Until recently, I thought that the way I run Puppies created an absolutely malware-proof system despite the absence of any anti-malware applications:

I run Puppies with Automatic Save turned off and, except as noted here, never execute a Save while on the internet. http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 066#974066. The internet is the Mother of All Malware.

Malware are applications/programs. 80% +/- of computers run Windows. Puppy is a family of Linux distros, and among the thousands of possible Linux operating systems available it is doubtful that more than 1% of Linux Users run Puppies. Although Puppies are binary compatible with popular such distros as Ubuntu, debian and Slackware, much of Puppy's infrastructure is unique to Puppies. If you were going to spend your time developing malware, would you spend it developing malware which would work under 80% of existent operating systems, or less than 1%?

See what happens if, without installing wine, you try to run an exe or msi file? For that matter, if you have a Ubuntu-based Puppy, see what happens if you try to install a Slackware.txz; or if Slackware-based, a Ubuntu/debian .deb?

Many sophisticated malware programs are acquired 'piece-meal' and your operating system used to assemble them. The operating system of frugal Puppy is created anew in RAM from Read-only files and your SaveFile/Folder. On shutdown, whatever is in RAM is cleared unless you execute a Save. And as noted in the above link, I don't. As also noted there, even a SaveFile/Folder, once you are satisfied with it, can be converted to a READ-ONLY adrv or ydrv.

Finally, as noted in that post, both firefox and Mike Walsh's last google-chrome.sfs can be run as Spot, adhering to the restrictions that files could only be downloaded into the Spot folder and would there have the wrong permissions to be run by Puppies. So, while I still run palemoon for obtaining access to popular website which, because of that popularity I expect to have taken adequate steps to prevent their own infestation by malware, I make greater use of firefox run-as-spot for other matters.

LOL, youngin, I'd advise yourself caution from reading the devoted sermons/rantings/ravings of our beloved crew here.
And I am one, so read the following with that proverbial grain of.....

The faithful here? They, well, they are a bit like a crazed, beyond-all-pale-devoted cult.

Make no mistake, you take us faithful here to task, we will rise & strike you down---errr, I mean "bark" at you---- and/or anyone who treads upon our sacrosanct, wizened land.

I know, as I said, I am one of them. But I am also old enough to remember what behaving "wise" actually entails.

There are no tin foil hats, no scriptures that come down from the mountain of computer code to be handed out with love and absolution, no alms for when you fail/fall. Only those of us (read: all) that wore & proselytize our holy puppy grail use them as barbed recitations for defense.

Thus, youngin', teach yourself as much as you can, understand that risk is not lessened by belief alone (and there is no "proof" in computer language land to salve once wounds are inflicted). Drink a hearty brew every now & then when you come to contemplate your own thoughts that allows you to think to the otherwise.

Its like, a few years ago, the comment in a talk Linus T once gave. When pressed, Linus was suddenly, jokingly asked, "are we still at a point in Linux where every line of code is gone over, verified, and run through....",........he sighed long, staring at the floor for several minutes (which had the intended effect of taking the "joke" out of everything), only to then raise his head and ruefully rephrase the question so everyone could see the answer, plainly & clearly:

"....let me get this straight, you want us, a community of mostly unpaid but devoted open-sourcees around the world to match the development money that Microsoft and/or Apple throws into their OSes?..........

The smile ran away from his face, and his point was made as if he had personally shot everyone in the room, in the face, with a howitzer.

Listen, if three types of guns are lying in a field in front of you, as a war wages across the meadow & beyond, you are only thankful the guns are there, to be picked up, and used. Nothing else, nothing more. You choose blind devotion to one weapon, then that is upon you, not anyone else.


Now, all this said, I will tell you my own personal preference: When it comes to the digital universe, D.U. (among many other things), I trust people, based on years of their past behaviour. As absolutely crazy as that sounds, or maybe until the day that AI can develop an OS without messy biological input, then I trust people. Thus, for the D.U., there are only a few when it comes to my and my family's absolute security in the ether world.

Actually, for me, there is only one person on this forum that stands far above all others.

This person has sort of been around for a little while, I guess (LOL ), and imho, he has earned way more of my trust than any other (or most others, combined even). That's not to say no others are trustworthy on this forum and/or any other. Far from it. I am just saying this one person earned trust the old-fashioned way, year after year, decade after decade. Time always is the best teacher, the best mother, the best father.

This person (much an old man like I am now), well, his OSes, to this day, still dominate this forum. That is something.

And this old man's attention to the creative and secure development process of his OSes still is top-notch, even when he's busy off camping and/or creating other wonderful things. Let's just say I've trusted this old man's work for nearly two decades, not years, but d-e-c-a-d-e-s:

His name is Barry.

Seek the man and his work out.

Barry is the embodiment of of two sayings:

--trust is earned, never given, and;

--love all, trust few, and do wrong to none.


As my own Pappy use to say when I was a youngin', ".....Better to trust the man who is frequently in error than the one who is never in doubt....."


If you haven't noticed, those you have read above (in this thread) are 'never in doubt'.

But Barry? Well, bless his soul, it is the essence of who he is.

And it is why his OSes, when you use them, are so wonderful and full of that most incredible, intangible thing:

Trust.



Now, youngin', let me return to the mentality of my above (in this thread) brethen.......each of us blind, rabid, and devotedly focused in fervor: if, when standing in the meadow of life & war, you choose to not "ever" pick up the gun of PuppyLinux, then you will not be the better man.

....and, of course, if you've read this far, to the rantings of this old man, then you need more help than I or anyone here in Pupland can provide

It also helps to install a current Host file to thwart the malicious multitude.

There have been discussions about using Hosts on the Forum since 2005. You can find such discussions and how to use them by typing the search term 'hosts' into http://wellminded.net63.net/. A quick scan of the print-out, turned up this thread from 2018, http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 71#1008871 but I kind of recall an even more recent discussion, I think, on the "How to" Section.

As I understand it, several reputable volunteer organizations prepare lists of the websites which spawn adware, malware, and re-directs to such websites. Operating systems read the list, and if a website is found on it, block your access to it. If I recall correctly someone posted that his/her list had grown to 45 Mbs.. Considering that one line of text, including the structure needed to contain it takes up about 5 bytes, that's kind of large. The best thing about Hosts is that their use will substantially speed up accessing the Web as even a 45 Mb list is read by your computer at the speed of its CPUs. Of course, accessing 'The Web' becomes faster the more you narrow what you can look at. The worst thing about Hosts is that unless you are willing to place your trust in what others consider malicious sites, you'll have to carefully examine each line on the list and decide whether an addition to the list was the result of misunderstanding or paranoia. For example, Ask.com appeared on someone list. You'll find a discussion about that here. http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 50#1015650.

I think that I have better uses of my time. Since about 2010, a no-arch application named Pup-Advert-Blocker has been available, http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=59290. It's probably one of your Puppy's 'built-ins'. Check the Internet Submenu. The one in Bionicpup64 provides a choice of three of the reputable Hosts lists. You can choose all and even edit the ones you choose from within its GUI. IIRC, a different version offered a choice of 4 lists. It's worth while to make a note to yourself to check that thread for recommendations by Puppy Fans.

When I remember, I activate Pup-Advert-Blocker. But, as I indicated in my previous post, I've set up my Puppies to keep nothing they stumble upon while wondering around the Web. You could add yours to /root/Startup.

Pup-Advert-Blocker is a Host selective file.

I will just add that the setting-up of a 'Hosts' file has, of necessity, to be a very personal selection of what to block. As Mike points out above, what you may consider to be relatively 'harmless', someone else may consider to be the very worst kind of malware.

However, that 45 MB hosts file certainly indicates that somebody has spent one HELL of a lot of time working on their hosts list.....quite possibly to the exclusion of pretty nearly everything else. To me, that spells a degree of paranoia, for better or worse.....

(*shrug*)


Mike.

See, this is 50% of why I love puppy linux and am now a convert...

THE COMMUNITY! Thank you all for all the answers, I had found a bit of info here on the forums, and this is what i found (Sorry for not sharing Flash!)

The bulk of what I gathered is summed up best on this thread by mikeslr :The majority of the computing world follows Microsoft platforms, so common sense tells me that the majority of viruses would be at that target demographic. The "big" thing you here about now and days is malware, and a few months ago, on a Windows sys., i got hit with a piece of it. PC locked, told me to call "microsoft" at this #... we all know the drill.

Now, so far as this new OS(new to me) I realize that, not only is it not the main system targeted, it is also a different, SMALL strain of Linux. Does this mean it couldn't happen?

The answer to this goes with what Mike Walsh and belham2 said: Be careful with who you trust. It's very unlikely that, using any Puppy, I will get hit with a virus/malware, but not impossible, so use a little common sense when Downloading; shut off Flash when at questionable sites, etc. Doing these simple techniques will help me to not be the first person using PL to get hit with these unwanted nasties.

Finally, I read MULTIPLE times that Puppy has never had a reported infection. Call me a sap, but hearing this from multiple sources makes me feel a bit more secure about playin' with my Mutt.

****************FUNNY SIDE NOTE*****************

The reason I posted this thread: So i was gifted an old PC, and it sat in a closet for another 2 weeks cause I didnt know what i wanted to do with it. It hit me one morning that i could use it as a home CCTV. I got online and was searching along these lines, and found out that small OS's are used to breath new life into old PC's. I researched all day on what OS I wanted to try, and decided on Puppy Linux because I love DOGS!!! LOL! Truly no other reason. So i DL it, no prob., put it on USB, no prob., and play with it for a bit. I lay down and nodded out a few hours later, and, when I woke up and went to my PC, the internet was out! Man, i thought i got hacked! I unplugged all the PC's, used my phone to change all my passwords, and when my room mate woke up, i told him to do the same. "why?" he asked, and I told him what i just told you. His response?

"Oh, my fault, bro, I forgot to go by and pay the internet bill!!!"

Man I about killed him.... but it is what made me think of the security of my new found OS. After this incident I researched how secure Puppy is and now, I RECOMMEND Puppy over Windows to all my friends and family.

do you want an instant CCTV system for your old PC?

Install Puppy Linux Tahr 6.0.5
download http://rockedge.org/kernels/data/PET/Ta ... 1.30.4.pet

once downloaded click on it once...and wait a while...takes a bit of time to finish
(DO NOT pull any plugs!!)

then you will have a ready to go ZoneMinder CCTV system.

in a browser http://localhost/zm

your welcome

Mike Walsh wrote:I will just add that the setting-up of a 'Hosts' file has, of necessity, to be a very personal selection of what to block. As Mike points out above, what you may consider to be relatively 'harmless', someone else may consider to be the very worst kind of malware.

However, that 45 MB hosts file certainly indicates that somebody has spent one HELL of a lot of time working on their hosts list.....quite possibly to the exclusion of pretty nearly everything else. To me, that spells a degree of paranoia, for better or worse.....

(*shrug*)


Mike.

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Energ ... mats/hosts

The link above produces a host file of 18 MB, which is the biggest one I've seen so far. It works well too; web pages load in less than half the time they take to load when I don't have a hosts file in place, and so far I haven't noticed it blocking any of the sites I want to see (which some hosts files I've used in the past did).

1. get rid of MS
2. get rid of MS
3. get rid of MS
4. use dillo or similar (no js)
5. surf wisely with the big browsers
6. puppy stuff:
6a. keep your pupsave slim and healthy
Keep your savefile slim and healthy
6b. regularly reinstall/change Puppy, sfs, ... delete all/reinstall all you use from trusted source
6c. boot from usb for personal stuff (bank), RAM (no pupsave), do not mount HD
7. Not against viruses, but also important to be safe:
make backups (at least 2 on 2 different devices) of personal stuff (documents, photos... ).

That's about it.
Did I mention to get rid of MS?
I've never had any trouble with viruses using Puppy.
I've seen some viruses, long time ago, it came through browser (ransomware), but no trouble.
With windows on the other hand, very very sad.