On Saturday 01 December 2007 22:55, Rony wrote:
I want to know if all these things are connected and is there some major infection going around?
It's called antivirus. Welcome to the world of av trashware trashing everything which it cannot identify.
Sourceforge could be using Linux servers, but I feel too scared to download anything for a week or two for windows, even if it is libre software.
Whoever told you that libre software is going to protect doze machines from themselves. You cant secure anything above the underlying insecure-by-grand-design os layer. AV and similiar software is the finest con game invented. Particularly the concept of "cleaning". Once a machine is infected you dont know what it has changed. Most AV have a # file which can be easily edited. Hence a payload could be anywhere on that mc. Infact in a doze env it could be anywhere in your network! and that includes linux machines. While the linux machines will be unaffected all the doze box will be slammed to death.
Besides sourceforge and similiar repos dont care whats on the server. You have to do the verification by checking the sigs. Debian uses md5 hashes in a Release file and gpg for sigining the Release file. u can therfore be reasonably sure that what u download is ok. Similiar schemes should exist for other distros too.