Worms, Viruses and Trojans prey on the extreme vulnerability and seamless integration of the Windows monoculture. Business has been lucky that the fast moving worms launched to date have been unarmed, but that luck won't hold forever. There is no defense for the first few days after release of a new worm. This has been demonstrated in late August 2003 by the extremely fast spread of the SoBig and Blaster worms.

So, when SoBig-F and Blaster-A struck late August, the only effect this had on us was that we received hundreds of emails from infected machines. These we could ignore and we continued to do our work as usual. We could do this because we knew that our systems were safe.

While all systems have vulnerabilities, the vast breadth and extent of vulnerability is a uniquely Microsoft problem, for very specific reasons.

All OpenSource Software and all Linux versions are safe from Windows based viruses, they can not spread to Linux (or UNIX) based systems, because the various methods and practices used to generate a virus are not exploitable under Linux and UNIX. This is a cost saving - Anti-Virus software is not needed.

The deployment of OpenSource Software means:

Can you, as a small business, afford not to use it?

SOPAC(WA) is a member of SLPWA, the Society of Linux Professionals of Western Australia