Quick question. I'm making a bootable USB with Kali on it to do some school work and practice for CTFs. Since I'll be running the OS from a flash drive and not a VM I'm worried about antivirus/malware protection. I'm not going to be doing anything malicious but I get nervous being on a computer connected to the internet and on an OS not running any antivirus/malware software. I'm super new to Linux so if this is a stupid question I apologize in advance!
Well maybe Kali ain't the distro for a beginner unless you need all the pentesting tools =)
On the other hand, there are not nearly as many linux viruses out there that are spread via exploit kits like for windows so you are fairly save as is.
Just use your brain and not run as root all the time! and dont run stuff you do not know.
A AV for Linux would be clamAV with its GUI ClamTk ... but it 99% looks for windows malware actually.
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I actually do need the tools, that's why I'm going to work with Kali. Keeps me from having to download a ton of tools.
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I personally never used anti virus on Linux. Even on Windows my experience has been that they don't really do anything. Waste of resources.
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Here's my advice.
On linux, as long as you're safe and don't do stupid things, you shouldn't need AV. to be honest, it's quicker to reinstall linux than to scan, so if you get infected, nuke, pave and restore personal files from a known-good (not infected) backup.
I'm super new to Linux so if this is a stupid question I apologize in advance!
There are no stupid questions, this is how you learn!
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Great, thank you. I'm actually downloading an ISO image of Kali right now and its saying it will take 12 hours to download 2.9GB...that seems a bit odd.
I've found that some mirrors have poor speeds. If you can download the torrent, do that and add the regular http download as a "web seed". the torrent client will download via the torrent swarm as fast as possible and try to saturate your connection the rest of the way with the HTTP seed.
Always happy to help!
EDIT: Have a look at the cdimage.kali.org mirrorlist for more knowledge!
1-Year necro, so closed. This thread can be reopened at the OP’s request or continued as a new thread.