Ubuntu Youth
The future of Open Source is in the Young People of today; that's why this corner of the magazine is for young people or simply those who are young at heart.
Written by Samuel Barett
Security Alert!
Security Alert!
Its not often you will hear an Ubuntu user mention viruses or spyware, that's because currently there are no known Linux viruses in the wild. But this doesn't mean you should run your Ubuntu box unprotected, there have been many proof of concept viruses and as the Linux operating system becomes ever more popular there are undoubtedly going to be security threats which affect users systems worldwide. So how can you protect yourself?
Anti-Virus
One of the most popular Linux based anti-virus programs is ClamAV, it is primarily used for scanning email gateways but can also be used to detect any future Linux and Windows viruses. ClamAV can be installed from Ubuntu's repositories and many plugins are also available so it can integrate in to your favourite mail client to scan for any nasty surprises in your attachments.
Firewalls
Another important step to protecting yourself from unwanted access to your computer is a firewall. One of the most popular and effective firewalls is Firewall Builder, it is both customisable and easy to use making keeping on top of your network security simple. Firewall Builder is available from the Ubuntu repositories.
User Access
Finally and most importantly you can dramatically reduce the risk of security attacks by creating separate accounts for each user rather than sharing accounts and passwords, allowing the account the minimum level of access they need. None of these should have root access and if possible root access should be kept to a minimum amount of accounts (usually one account in most cases). Extra security items like Dans Guardian and Adblock Plus (for firefox) can be installed on a system to control what a user see's on the internet, these programs can be used in school, office and home environments giving you the same power as expensive commercial alternatives.
