Short answer: NOPE, no need.monsterjazzlicks wrote:should you have ANTI VIRUS PROTECTION installed on this particular device?
Consider this 'test case':
1) Figure out how you'd connect a RPi to the internet in the first place. Software-wise, that is.
2) Grab whatever list of viruses that would 'frighten' you: the last 100 highly publicized, a top list of the most damaging ones, the most nasty ones to remove, etc.
3) For each of those: look up detailed info on how they work, how they spread from system to system, what systems are vulnerable (and why), etc.
Then you would find that for a variety of reasons, your viruses of choice wouldn't make it onto the RPi:
-Virus targets some flavor of Windows = not what you're running on the RPi.
-Virus usually consists of x86 binary code = doesn't work on the RPi's ARM cpu.
-Virus targets popular OS. In this case, most likely candidate would be Android. Which I suspect few users will be running on their RPi.
-Virus works on systems where regular user has admin rights. That'll not be the case with the various Linux flavors that run on the RPi.
-Virus installs itself into some files on your PC's harddrive until that (or the OS on it) is wiped. Which hardly ever happens. With the RPi, chances are you'll wipe & re-image SD cards regularly.
-On that PC, you won't notice another process running as long as it doesn't eat >50% of your CPU cycles. On the RPi, you would notice exactly because you're checking what processes are running, and cutting every unnecessary one from your config.
-Virus tries to find valuable info like banking credentials etc. Which you most likely won't have stored on SD cards you use with the RPi.
In other words: see short answer.
That's only true if you regard viruses as all the same, something that 'fills the internet pipes' and will make it onto any connected device eventually. In practice, there's very different viruses, different OS'es targeted, a wide variety of internet-connected devices that run different sets of services, have different vulnerabilities, different patching procedures, etc, etc. Read: some systems/devices are orders of magnitude more likely to be infected than others, and each infection is different too. And the RPi isn't anywhere near the top of the heap in this regard.I assume that it is prone to contracting a virus as are all internet connected computers (however small).
Nope (ARM vs. x86 CPU, as noted above).And if so, is it compatible with the regular Norton/Kaspersky/McAfee versions which you install on a laptop/PC
I might be wrong, but most likely such a thing does not exist. Or at least, not produced by the likes of Norton/Kaspersky/McAfee etc.Or do you have to download/install one which is specific and exclusive to the Raspberry (brand)?