Security application recommendations

Now THAT’S a humble brag if I’ve ever seen one…

Wasn’t mean to be a brag, i just felt sharing what i did in practice back then, to make a point.
:woman_shrugging:

Even more so…

:wink: :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: :smile:

What Aragorn wrote should be carved in stone somewhere…

A small addition for the users that dual boot and are still tied with Windows: in the Era of Wind 10 before 2-3 years, Microsoft decided to cut cost on the Quality assurance department. Despite laying off the people, they decided testing on real hardware is too hard and expensive. So nowadays, there is virtually no testing of the os updates on a real hardware, it is all virtual. Which leads to all sorts of problems when a driver updates, and boy, it of course updates automatically… So if Windows was beta quality before 10 years, since Win10 it is practically an alpha quality software.

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I assume - new to Linux - since you have to include the next sentence.

Running LInux as your workstation OS is not the same problem as it is running Windows.

The vast majority - I dare an estimate around 99% - in the malware family targets Windows operating systems - and as such no real threat to Linux desktop.

That is great - then you know to steer clear of dubious sites, porn, wares and illegal distribution sites etc.

As mentioned by @cscs security is not a one-size-fits-all,

A private workstation behind an ISP router cannot be reached by a random bypassing bot - so not in the same threat zone as a public webserver.

A webserver on a public IP on the other hand - requires attention - how much attention depends on the sites served.

If you host a wordpress site, you will desparately need WAF (Web Application Firewall), to fend of all those attack vectors Wordpress CMS presents.

So you see - the answers to your question - is not straight forward.

What you really need - Windows or LInux - is a service which filters your internet traffic for ads and known malware sites.

  • opensnitch is an application firewall
    • look at it as a reversed firewall
    • it filters your outgoing traffic instead of inbound
  • portmaster-stub is an installer to download the latest PortMaster App and rules
  • firewalld is an excellent firewall for systemd based LInux
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The good thing in Linux is, it is all free software in the repositories, with tons of programs. So you do not need those dubious sites and cracks anymore, which are geared towards Windows anyways.
I guess the porn sites are inevitable for younger users :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

And use an adblocker service on the browser, like https://ublockorigin.com/ for example. It blocks some of the exploits and malware sites too.

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And DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials. And don’t use Google as a search engine. Use DuckDuckGo or StartPage.

:duck::duck::walking_man:

:stuck_out_tongue:

Hmm i never heard of that, but reading a bit it sounds and looks great, thanks for mentioning/linking it :+1:
I find it refreshing to have a user friendly outgoing-firewall per app on Linux :clap:
I will try it soon™ Works nice!

If you want “better” answers, you need to ask “better” questions :wink:

If you name exactly what kind of risk you want to protect yourself against, then you will certainly get concrete, sensible answers.

But first you have to deal intensively with Linux (enough material is already in this thread)

The main point is:

Linux is not windows.

This means that you don’t need to have the same fears on a Linux system as you do on a Windows system. Enough has been written above about why this is the case. But you don’t just have to read it, you have to “process” it and “look it up”. In 2 or 3 years you will understand us :wink: .

Because Linux is so secure, it is particularly important that the user does not destroy it with his own gross mistakes. (Hence the warnings above).

User carelessness is by far the biggest security problem with Linux, and there are no programs to deal with it

:footprints:

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Consider SearchX as well :arrow_down:

https://docs.searxng.org

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