It targets router firmwares though… These bot farms do not usually target real gnu/Linux os, because it is easier and more effective to attack router firmwares that are not well configured by producers and telcoms, and are practically never upgraded.

Therefore they are not a real threat for standard mint or popOS user… Let alone gentoo users

Edit. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirai_(malware)

I use python professionaly. Never seen a real successful supply chain attack on libraries used by “normal” people. There was recently a supply chain attack to pytorch, that I remember, but it was solved within few hours.

It is not a real risk for non developers. It is a risk, but veeery low, miles lower than pdf.exe.

Just check this stat for ransomwares taken as an example of viruses: https://www.statista.com/statistics/701020/major-operating-systems-targeted-by-ransomware/

Windows server is ~20% of server market. Still it is there second, with in practice no GNU/linux (80% of server market). This is why people do not really worry much, the risk exists, but it is minimal for well configured system compared to competition, even where competitors are a niche and Linux machines are the main target.

On windows, an antivirus is not a bad idea… On Linux, a firewall and basic care are usually sufficient

I agree with you, but, it is also true that the overwhelming majority of ransomwares affect windows https://www.statista.com/statistics/701020/major-operating-systems-targeted-by-ransomware/

Linux is not a significant target despite being so diffused

Edit. For those downvoting, windows server is ~20% of the server market and it is second in that stat. GNU/Linux distros such as rhel, debian and so on are almost 80% of server market and still there are no sufficient attacks reported to end up in that stat

Ok, than the experiment you are doing is just to check how many attacks you can get over a certain time… It is not really representative of a common use case. And again, this is not a virus. It is a successful attack from a bot on a purposely misconfigured service exposed to the internet. An antivirus is not needed. What is needed is basic configuration. An antivirus cannot help there

And disable password authentication as first step

Does the attack succeed? Never happened to me. You see bot trying, but really never seen succeeding irl. How is it configured?

Do you have also a rdp honeypot by chance? Do you see different rates of attack? Honestly curious.

I don’t have any windows licenses around, otherwise, it would have been an interesting test

Not at all. You leave a ssh port open, you don’t necessarily get a virus. Try it. Set up a raspberry pi, install ssh and leave the port open in your firewall. It is much less risky than exposing rdp (the most comparable windows protocol) on windows for instance.

It is a security risk, but absolutely not comparable of installing pdf.exe. Not even in the same league of risk.

As said, try it now and tell me how it goes.

There is a lot of misinformation around security on Linux

I have been using linux for almost 2 decades, never seen a virus. And I never heard of a colleague or friend who got one on Linux. That’s why no one has ever installed an antivirus, because, till now, the risk has been practically zero.

On windows, on the other hand, I saw so many viruses on friends and relatives computers…

People install antiviruses depending on the experience.

To be fair, we all know on Linux viruses exist, but is objectively pretty difficult to get one. It is not worth installing an antivirus if one doesn’t actively install garbage from untrusted sources

I don’t want to try. I have pretty low barrier. I set up NSFW filter on lemmy because I found disturbing the furry content that was common some time ago… I don’t want even to try anything worst than that

The solution in this case is absolutely AI filters. Unfortunately you won’t find many people willing to build robust model for that. Because they’d be those getting the ptsd you mention.

Time to share this wisdom with IT security departments of the companies I worked for. Wsl2 is in the zero trust white papers of MS (or whatever IT security uses to take decisions). Real distros are not. Result, no trust…

Enterprise IT… Non sense since the 70s

Wsl2 and podman.

Far from a nice overall experience compared to using docker on a real OS, but the best I could get on windows