Vanisa Surapipith V.Surapipith@uea.ac.uk writes:
Can virus attact a linux system? People with MSWindows are constantly affected and need to update their Norton or McAfee virus scanner. Is there a similar thing in linux world?
Viruses could exist on Linux, but they would have trouble infecting other users on the same system, assuming most of your programs are installed as root and you log in as another user. That's why people say you should be very cautious about doing anything other than the bare minimum as root.
Worms and intrusions are more common. That's why everyone says to keep up to date with patches and security updates. As your machine was professionally installed, I assume they installed all known security updates? With RedHat, I don't know if there's an automated tool with it, but you can keep safe by reading either the "Security" page of LWN, http://lwn.net/ (out every Thursday), or the regular Security newsletter (out most Saturdays) from http://www.linuxsecurity.com/