One of desktop Linux’s chief selling points is its near-immunity to malware. Whether this superiority is due to the Unix security measures that Windows lacks, or to the mere fact that comparatively few people use Linux on desktop computers, it makes Linux attractive in an era when all manner of nasty things can be done to computer users by exploiting bugs in the software they run.

There seems to be a false sense of security among some Linux users. The number of malicious programs specifically written for GNU/Linux has been on the increase in recent years and in the year of 2005 alone has more than doubled: from 422 to 863.

"Today I finally decided to work out this element of our task list. We are happy that now MyServer can be distributed under the GPLv3 terms license without any exception. Previously we were using OpenSSL for the HTTPS protocol, it was giving us some licensing troubles as we needed to add an exception to the original GPLv3 license..."

Analysis: Red Hat, Canonical and Novell are enhancing the security features in their Fedora, Ubuntu and OpenSUSE Linux distributions, which are all slated for release later in 2008.

The pace of software development - regardless of the licence - is pretty fast these days. The state of your systems need constant monitoring. New features, bug-fixes and (most important) security updates need to be properly managed. Here, in no particular order, are five ways that choosing a free operating system will make system maintenance a lot easier and simpler.

This tutorial shows how you can use GnuPG to secure and verify data on your Linux box but the first part is relevant for Windows users too.

US-CERT is aware of active attacks against linux-based computing infrastructures using compromised SSH keys. The attack appears to initially use stolen SSH keys to gain access to a system, and then uses local kernel exploits to gain root access. Once root access has been obtained, a rootkit known as "phalanx2" is installed.

Creator of the Linux kernel explains why he finds security people to be so anathema.