Computer viruses slow African expansion | Hacker News Reader

Computer viruses slow African expansion

guardian.co.uk

24 pointsdavecardwell15 comments

Not to turn this into a Slashdot thread, but I find it puzzling that the article fails to mention Linux till the final paragraphs, then quotes someone who is either being taken out of context or is a moron: "Khokhar says it's no magic solution. "If you suddenly had an increase in Linux or Mac use in China, you'd find those two platforms are just as vulnerable.""

Er, no: if you compile from the source or use well-known downloads, it's pretty damn unlikely that you're going to have the same problems you have getting CS 4 from a Warez site.

I think what the article is saying is that if Linux or Mac OS X becomes more used, then you will begin to see viruses pop up on those platforms. Of course, I would argue that it's harder to find/write/distribute exploits for a unix system than windows.

This was clearly true of windows pre-vista. Post-vista windows, it may not be so much. The vista security model is a very different beast (assuming the same quality of user).

Interestingly, for the average user, Ubuntu provides a much more centralized software repository than either Windows or OS X. Not to say that malware targeting that platform doesn't exist; but it's more likely to be aimed at Firefox than the base OS. It's much harder for a non-computer-savvy person to screw up a modern linux desktop than any version of windows.

But basically what I hear you saying is that Vista was an attempt to catch up to the safety and security of the linux desktop...

In many ways Vista surpassed Linux. Linux has very rough process/file levels (user, group, root). Vista allows you to have your processes (or root's processes, IIRC) not be able to write to your files.

Which is a big win when a user level process (e.g. firefox) gets hosed (which can happen quite easily to things like browsers).

Now this is wholy for the OS. The user issue you bring up still exists (and I don't think Microsoft can fix that one).

> Which is a big win when a user level process (e.g. firefox) gets hosed (which can happen quite easily to things like browsers).

Run Firefox under a different user account, with limited access to the system. Problem solved.

It's not solved. How do you download a file? How do you let it download this file, but not that one?

Firefox isn't built to understand that concept, so it takes more than just denying it write privledges to solve.

You download to the dedicated users home directory, and then you make your main user part of the same group as the firefox-user. I didn't get the last part of your question? Why wouldn't you want to download that file?

I would suggest you take a look at apparmor and selinux both of which can be used; and in recent ubuntu and redhat releases, are used extensively, to provide very fine grained access control capabilities.

The Ubuntu distro was founded by a South African, Mark Shuttleworth.

What an interesting problem. Unfortunately, the problem is not the anti-virus software, but a general lack of technological knowledge, which is expected for a developing country.

Moving to a "more secure" OS (i.e. Linux) would be a good solution. This will result in computing legitimacy (less pirating) and viruses. I doubt the normal student or government worker (or anyone, really) need that super-advanced feature on Microsoft Word.

Yet unfortunately, once again, there are bigger problems in Africa than lack of technology. Fix the government corruption problem first, and things will start falling into place.

I don't use office software much. However, Word is much, much nicer than OpenOffice. Even for basic editing. If people are doing almost anything more complicated than the basic text document, they can use the well-researched UI.

Whether that is worth the price tag is up to them.

There are a litany of economical, cultural, geographical, and other issues at play here. Plenty of opportunities for enterprising startups to solve problems.

Unfortunately not much money to gain from it.

Just like Aids....

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