I just read in the German magazine Computerwoche (print) that the number of Linux viruses doubled in 2005 (863) compared to 2004 (422). These numbers come from Konstantin Sapranov who works as a virus analyst for Kaspersky Lab. Of course, one has to be always cautious with such numbers especially coming from an anti-virus vendor. However, it is obvious that the growing popularity of Linux makes it more attractive for virus writers and other villains.

In my view, Windows is still less secure than Linux because of the reasons I discussed recently. Considering how things developed with Firefox and Internet Explorer this might change in the future. In the beginning, security was the most often mentioned argument for Firefox, but with its rising popularity, more and more vulnerabilities were being detected.

Many anti-virus vendors offer products for Linux now, too. Softwin (BitDefender Antivirus Scanner for Unices), Avira (Antivir Linux Workstation), Sophos (Antivirus for Linux) and Kaspersky (Anti-Virus for Linux File Server & Workstation) are already prepared for this new market. There are open source solutions as well. Clam Antivirus (ClamAV) and OpenAntiVirus are well known meanwhile. The scan engine for ClamAV is also used by Kaspersky. Although the OpenAntiVirus project is already running since 2000, its tools can not yet be recommended for productive environments.