Antivirus for Linux?

[patriciaduv]

Hi all,
What do you use in your system as Antivirus and does it realy matter?
Thanks.

[8Geee]

Puppy reeally does not need anti-virus. Running your browser with ad-blocking apps handles most of the viral threat.

However, if you also run Windows (of ANY kind) on the same computer, then anti-virus is suggested, and won't hurt in Puppy. Of course Windows needs ad-blocks for the browser also.

Regards
8Geee

[rufwoof]

Puppy reeally does not need anti-virus.

Provided its run the right way. Booting from usb stick, loading it all into ram and then disconnecting the usb for instance. Such that the MBR, bootloader, kernel ... etc. used to boot are all physically isolated.

[musher0]

Hello, patriciaduv.

In addition, install Puppy as frugal with a pupsave file. Zip your pupsave file every day
or every second day, depending on your use.

An accident happens? Unzip your back-up copy to your pupsave file, reboot, and your
Puppy is as good as new. At the worst, you'll have lost yesterday's changes, but that's it.

As to the Puppy main sfs, it's in the iso you have downloaded, so simply reopen the iso
and make a copy of Puppy sfs. Considering this main Puppy sfs and zdrvive are on
non-writable archives, it is extremely unlikely they can get tampered with. Any changes
will rather be registered in the pupsave file. So always having an up-to-date back-up of
your pupsave file at hand takes care of that potential problem.

IHTH.

[soniabu]

"In addition, install Puppy as frugal with a pupsave file. Zip your pupsave file every day
or every second day, depending on your use.

An accident happens? Unzip your back-up copy to your pupsave file, reboot, and your
Puppy is as good as new. At the worst, you'll have lost yesterday's changes, but that's it."

interesting what you wrote; I use bionicpup64 on USB and my" bionicpup64save.4fs" its big: 12Gb.
what I don't understand is how do you carry out the restoration if the operating system no longer works. You have to access the pupsave file from another system and restore from the backup, right?
sonia

[s243a]

Hi all,
What do you use in your system as Antivirus and does it realy matter?
Thanks.

For top notch security advise listen to rufwoof. If you want some benefits of anti-virus protection without the overhead (and security risks [1]), then you can can scan a file with some online like virus-total:
https://www.virustotal.com/gui/

before installing it. Typically if you install a package from an official repo then it should be safe. If you add repos like *-universe you are likely still safe but there is a greater risk of a rouge developer. Your browser is the greatest attack vector and browser security is much better on linux than windows.

For best security you can restrict the anti-virus software to a virtual machine and only scan files that have changed since the last scan. You could create a script that copies recently changed files to the virtual machine for scanning. If you use a multi-save usb than the recently changed files will be in a separate file.

Notes
---------
1. If you install your anti-virus software from the official repo than it should be safe. However, anti-virus software is a common attack vector because if one can compromise the anti-virus software then they might get access to a privileged process.

[8Geee]

Well... the browser does come as "default". Even in Firefox, which by most opinions is safer than chrome or M$ (sdge?), there are literally hundreds of default settings that need a change. Since meltdown/spectre one should consider disabling numerous "auto-complete" or look-ahead or auto- anything. Nonetheless, adblockers, and script-gates are needed.

And yes frugal install with daily saves, or save-on-shutdown is a good start... so is running a live CD/DVD (no rewrite).

Regards
8Geee