[TriLUG] Linux on Alpha...

[Aaron Joyner]

Clay Carley wrote:
> ...Good luck with this- these are great machines, as well as more secure (who 
> writes virus code that runs on 64-bit RISC chips?)...

Don't forget that one of *NIX's strengths may also one day be it's 
greatest weakness.  The very large percentage of *NIX platforms have a C 
compiler, perl, python, bash and a host of other very capable languages 
installed.  If the original exploit depends on machine code or register 
sizes, you might have some slight measure of insulation from the 
problem, but what ever madness the attacker wants to use your machine 
for after the compromise is very likely to be platform independent. 
Having all of those tools readily available makes it much easier to 
write source-compatible universal apps, and then use the local build 
environment to make them machine specific.

Aaron S. Joyner