Linux keeps dodging hackers and viruses
A survey of 500 Linux developers carried out by Evans Data, a research company, and published last week, found that 78 percent of them claimed never to have been hacked. Of the 22 percent that had fallen victim to hacking, nearly a quarter said they had been attacked by internal users with valid login IDs. By comparison, earlier this year Evans Data surveyed a group of non-Linux users and found that a significantly higher proportion -- three in five -- of those had suffered a security breach.
In the latest survey, Evans Data also looked at virus infection rates; over 90 percent of those surveyed said they had never been infected with a virus.
Although the threat from viruses does exist for Linux users -- Bliss, the first Linux virus, was written back in 1997 -- most of the viruses sweeping the Web at present are written to take advantage of flaws in Microsoft software, because the sheer number of Windows systems gives any one virus a much greater chance of spreading.
"The reasons for the greater inherent security of the Linux OS are simple: more eyes on the code means that less slips by and the OS is naturally going to be better secured," said Nicholas Petreley, Evans Data's Linux analyst, in a statement.
