Can The Pandora Get Viruses?

[Shock-Socks]

because the pandora will be able to brows the internet, is there a possibility of people making viruses specifically for the pandora, and if so, is there going to be any form of virus protection?

 

[Username]

Yes, but why would someone make a virus for such a small market? Waste of time for whoever decides to do that.

 

[Kaze0110]

1.) It's linux.
2.) Put a condom on your router.

 

[dflemstr]

Yes, but why would someone make a virus for such a small market? Waste of time for whoever decides to do that.

+ you would have to be really stupid to activate such a virus and let it run on your Pandora.

Let's imagine that there is a virus specifically made for the Pandora.
In order to get it to "infect" the device, you have to follow the following steps:
1. Download the virus program
2. Save it to a trusted folder
3. Go into the terminal
4. Type "chmod +x virusfile" to activate the virus
5. Type "./virusfile" to run the virus
6. If you want the virus to be able to completely trash the device, and not just delete your personal files and folders, you have to do "su -c ./virusfile"
Now, I don't think that there would be a lot of people who would be willing to do that.

There is of course the possibility of having malicious PND files or .desktop files, but you can't really make an efficient virus protection system to counter that, and it wouldn't be worth it performance-wise even if you could.

 

[Shock-Socks]

Yes, but why would someone make a virus for such a small market? Waste of time for whoever decides to do that.

on the off chance that someone does make a virus for the pandora, what could be done about it?

 

[dflemstr]

Yes, but why would someone make a virus for such a small market? Waste of time for whoever decides to do that.

on the off chance that someone does make a virus for the pandora, what could be done about it?

Someone would make a post on this forum that warns people not to download the specific file and to execute it (remember, to start the virus you have to go through the 6 steps above). It would then be removed from the File Archive, and that would be it.

 

[zhasha]

on the off chance that someone does make a virus for the pandora, what could be done about it?

At best you'll get a virus that lies dorment on your system and infects Windows machines on local networks. Even so you'll still have to do as was said. Download it yourself, make it executable, and run it.
There are no known exploits and as soon as they are known, they'll be immediately patched (pertaining to the linux kernel and tools that give root access)

 

[Wheels]

on the off chance that someone does make a virus for the pandora, what could be done about it?

Probably the same thing you'd do if you managed to corrupt the firmware; reinstall it.

 

[Enverex]

Yes, but why would someone make a virus for such a small market? Waste of time for whoever decides to do that.

on the off chance that someone does make a virus for the pandora, what could be done about it?

Reevaluate your life choices.

 

[cobaltage]

Viruses on computers are similar to viruses in biological systems, in that they need a population of susceptible infectees to thrive and propagate. So viruses for Windows PCs spread quickly, because they comprise the vast majority of networked computers. Considering that there are no malicious viruses for OSX, which is still only a small fraction of PCs, there's really not much need to worry about a sudden Linux virus contagion, AFAIK.

In other words, in terms of people, a virus that can infect only 1% of the population won't spread nearly as fast as a virus that can infect 99% of the population. Presumably, that's why computer viruses that affect such a small proportion of devices don't get written. That's also why it's good that there are multiple OS's.

 

[dflemstr]

Viruses on computers are similar to viruses in biological systems, in that they need a population of susceptible infectees to thrive and propagate. So viruses for Windows PCs spread quickly, because they comprise the vast majority of networked computers. Considering that there are no malicious viruses for OSX, which is still only a small fraction of PCs, there's really not much need to worry about a sudden Linux virus contagion, AFAIK.

...and if you make a Venn diagram of users using Linux, users using ARM devices, users using Ångström-versioned libraries, all the stupid users in the world and all of the users who know how to make a file executable in Linux, you'll see that the remaining common subset is extremely small (I would guess that it's around 4-5 users, not more).

...which makes a virus almost as improbable as it can get.

 

[Squidge]

In order to get it to "infect" the device, you have to follow the following steps:

Or, you could work in the same way as a large proportion of viruses in the PC world work - via exploits. Should the version of Firefox on Pandora has some kind of buffer overflow exploit, all it would need is to visit some "bad" site and your Pandora could be infected. Of course there would be very little it could do as you wouldn't be logged in as root, but as a limited user, but we know some people don't like commands such as 'sudo' so those WOULD be logged in as root. For them the only way to disinfect would be a reinstall (which in itself isn't that bad, as all your downloads, game saves, etc would be stored on SD cards, so you wouldn't really notice much difference after the reinstall as everything would still work bar perhaps things like your desktop wallpaper maybe).

 

[WizardStan]

At best you'll get a virus that lies dorment on your system and infects Windows machines on local networks.

I've been told that if I want to connect my Pandora to the company network, I have to have a virus scanner for this very reason (that I may download a document or something that contains a virus targeted at Windows).
I may never get a virus, and any virus I may carry in is unlikely to ever get run, but the chance is non-zero, and just to cover everyone's butt, I shall be investigating Clam AV.
I'm sure someone could easily add Pandora specific virus definitions to it as well, should any arise.
The thing that Shock-Socks is probably not aware of is that, in order for a virus scanner to identify a virus, it needs to know what it's looking for. ie, someone has to have found that virus, investigated its unique properties, and added it to the virus scanners definition file.
For such a (currently) small market, it's just way easier to check the forum or repository or blog or whatever every once in a while.

 

[Gary13579]

In order to get it to "infect" the device, you have to follow the following steps:

Or, you could work in the same way as a large proportion of viruses in the PC world work - via exploits. Should the version of Firefox on Pandora has some kind of buffer overflow exploit, all it would need is to visit some "bad" site and your Pandora could be infected. Of course there would be very little it could do as you wouldn't be logged in as root, but as a limited user, but we know some people don't like commands such as 'sudo' so those WOULD be logged in as root. For them the only way to disinfect would be a reinstall (which in itself isn't that bad, as all your downloads, game saves, etc would be stored on SD cards, so you wouldn't really notice much difference after the reinstall as everything would still work bar perhaps things like your desktop wallpaper maybe).

This is much more accurate of a post. You can get infected quite easily, any virus that takes advantage of an exploit in FireFox, with a properly built Linux binary, could infect you.

As to how much damage can be done... if you're an idiot and run as root, you can get keylogged, entire system ruined (reinstall OS), mass data loss... but if you run a *normal* account as suggested, only root can read from the keyboard and only root can harm the OS. So you can't be keylogged that way.

 

[Dead1nside]

The Pandora uses both an ARM instruction set and Linux operating system. There aren't any (to my knowledge, except proof of concept ones) viruses on Linux right now. A Windows virus can still be transmitted through Linux but it can't execute anything due to the different environment. Secondly most viruses are probably x86 executables which wouldn't run on an ARM based device anyway.

In theory somebody could create one but it's very unlikely. Still good to have up to date software and a secure router and firewall.

 

[Gary13579]

At best you'll get a virus that lies dorment on your system and infects Windows machines on local networks.

I've been told that if I want to connect my Pandora to the company network, I have to have a virus scanner for this very reason (that I may download a document or something that contains a virus targeted at Windows).
I may never get a virus, and any virus I may carry in is unlikely to ever get run, but the chance is non-zero, and just to cover everyone's butt, I shall be investigating Clam AV.
I'm sure someone could easily add Pandora specific virus definitions to it as well, should any arise.
The thing that Shock-Socks is probably not aware of is that, in order for a virus scanner to identify a virus, it needs to know what it's looking for. ie, someone has to have found that virus, investigated its unique properties, and added it to the virus scanners definition file.
For such a (currently) small market, it's just way easier to check the forum or repository or blog or whatever every once in a while.

You need to talk to your network admins, then. The only way a Pandora virus could attempt to infect Windows networks was if it was made *specifically* to run on the Pandora. Most viruses aim x86 Windows users. This *could* affect Linux users via wine, but not to a serious extent. The virus could persist in wine and spread to networked devices running windows.... except this is an ARM device, and Windows binaries won't work like that.

The chances of someone specifically creating a virus for Linux ARM devices for the sole purpose of scanning networked Windows PCs for open exploits... is just stupid low. Any net admin that doesn't see that has some issues.

Edit: I was beaten by 3 minutes. Damn my long posts .

 

[aesir911]

Yes, but why would someone make a virus for such a small market? Waste of time for whoever decides to do that.

+ you would have to be really stupid to activate such a virus and let it run on your Pandora.

Let's imagine that there is a virus specifically made for the Pandora.
In order to get it to "infect" the device, you have to follow the following steps:
1. Download the virus program
2. Save it to a trusted folder
3. Go into the terminal
4. Type "chmod +x virusfile" to activate the virus
5. Type "./virusfile" to run the virus
6. If you want the virus to be able to completely trash the device, and not just delete your personal files and folders, you have to do "su -c ./virusfile"
Now, I don't think that there would be a lot of people who would be willing to do that.

There is of course the possibility of having malicious PND files or .desktop files, but you can't really make an efficient virus protection system to counter that, and it wouldn't be worth it performance-wise even if you could.

This is the only way for viruses to get on your system? Don't some viruses automatically execute these 6 steps upon viewing/downloading? How many viruses are there for linux based systems? Is it as heavy as Windows, or as light as Leopard?

 

[j.pickens]

The most likely way you'll get a virus with your Pandora is when you pass it around to all your admiring friends, and one of them sneezes on the keyboard.

 

[Shock-Socks]

The most likely way you'll get a virus with your Pandora is when you pass it around to all your admiring friends, and one of them sneezes on the keyboard.

lol, amongst all this tech talk, it's nice to see some humor.

thanks to everyone for your great, and well educated responses!

 

[aesir911]

The most likely way you'll get a virus with your Pandora is when you pass it around to all your admiring friends, and one of them sneezes on the keyboard.

well that is good to hear. there goes a load of worry off my back.