What would happen if you ran a windows virus using Wine?

[swoll1980]

the universe as we know it would be annihilated

[shane2peru]

stop giving me ideas I'm actually thinking of reinstalling ubuntu... I kinda messed it up allready.
???????
Let me think for a while

All it would do, is put a bunch of viruses all over your computer, however they are windows executables, therefore if you don't run them with wine, they will just set there, however if executed, more than likely they would only reproduce themselves. Viruses tend to spread first, and infect (do their damage in the background) With wine this is a little more difficult because you are not running a full blow windows system. It could in theory erase your hdd if you have the right virus, but I don't know what virus does what. It would be to your advantage to look up the virus on symantec's web site or something to know what it would do. You don't want to run one that deletes or destroys things. Just my 2 cents worth.

Shane

[jakupl]

the universe as we know it would be annihilated

You don't want to run one that deletes or destroys things.

why? If i'm gonna reinstall the entire system anyways ... it would almost be an advantage

[bodhi.zazen]

All it would do, is put a bunch of viruses all over your computer, however they are windows executables, therefore if you don't run them with wine, they will just set there, however if executed, more than likely they would only reproduce themselves. Viruses tend to spread first, and infect (do their damage in the background) With wine this is a little more difficult because you are not running a full blow windows system. It could in theory erase your hdd if you have the right virus, but I don't know what virus does what. It would be to your advantage to look up the virus on symantec's web site or something to know what it would do. You don't want to run one that deletes or destroys things. Just my 2 cents worth.

Shane

That is just not true. first you typically need to configure wine to allow window viruses to run at all. second, if a virus runs at all, it does not have access to files outside of ~/.wine. third , if a virus is found to run on wine, wine is then patched.

See here :

http://www.linux.com/articles/42031

Please do not spread FUD re: wine.

[shane2peru]

That is just not true. first you typically need to configure wine to allow window viruses to run at all. second, if a virus runs at all, it does not have access to files outside of ~/.wine. third , if a virus is found to run on wine, wine is then patched.

See here :

http://www.linux.com/articles/42031

Please do not spread FUD re: wine.

This is from experience, not just theory. Read this post: http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php...4&postcount=18 from page 1. I did run a virus by accident using wine, and it infected almost my entire /home/username directory. They do run. I certainly don't mean to slight the people working on the wine project, because I honestly believe they are doing a great job! Just that viruses are made to run on anything. Interesting to think, viruses can run on about any version of windows, and yet Windows can't get their programs to run on all versions. I know, a virus is a very simplistic program and the others are not. But still funny to me.

Shane

[bodhi.zazen]

This is from experience, not just theory. Read this post: http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php...4&postcount=18 from page 1. I did run a virus by accident using wine, and it infected almost my entire /home/username directory. They do run. I certainly don't mean to slight the people working on the wine project, because I honestly believe they are doing a great job! Just that viruses are made to run on anything. Interesting to think, viruses can run on about any version of windows, and yet Windows can't get their programs to run on all versions. I know, a virus is a very simplistic program and the others are not. But still funny to me.

Shane

your /home/user or just /home/user/.wine ?

/home/user != / or system files

The only way to "infect" system files would be to run wine as root, which is not advised or supported.

Can you provide more details about your experience ? How did you configure wine ? What version of wine was it? Has it been reported and patched ? Are you saying it "just happened" when you plugged in the usb device ? How was it you ran a virus / worm ?

You should be posting a bug report with Launchpad (Ubuntu) and/or WineHQ not spreading FUD or making sweeping generalizations about wine.

[shane2peru]

your /home/user or just /home/user/.wine ?

/home/user != / or system files

Can you provide more details about your experience ? How did you configure wine ? What version of wine was it? Has it been reported and patched ? Are you saying it "just happened" when you plugged in the usb device ? How was it you ran a virus / worm ?

You should be posting a bug report with Launchpad (Ubuntu) and/or WineHQ not spreading FUD or making sweeping generalizations about wine.

Well, yes much of this was my fault for opening wine up to my entire /home/username directory, not just the .wine folder. I had a little windows program that would take a text file and transform it to a Bible file for a Bible program, and it was on my USB stick. I took that to a company here in Peru (almost all windows computers here in Peru have a virus of some form or another about 95% of them are using pirated software), and had them print some things for me, apparently the virus on their computer infected the .exe file on my usb stick. I came home, unaware of the problem, and ran the .exe file a week later. It didn't run correctly and after about 5 minutes I realized that wine was still running in the background, and I killed the process. Out of ignorance, I ran the file again, a few times I guess (don't remember now) and it littered my computer with 1,000's of bogus .exe files. I had recently moved over from Windows so I had a good collection of .exe files that I still have saved to my computer. So then I had to decipher what was an infected .exe and what was a good .exe. After a while with the help of clamAv I got it all cleaned up. I have no idea what version of wine it was probably back in the 0.93x days or something. Never bothered to report it, because 1. Didn't know I should. 2. Figured it was my own fault for ignorance. It didn't really touch my computer, just propagated itself 1000 times on my hdd. It didn't get into my root directory (/) just my /home/username/ . I linked that to wine as my MyDocuments folder so that I could easily access the files I needed to get at. And, I don't mean to spread stuff, just telling my experience. I mean jakupl asked about running a virus. After reading the link you posted I guess not all will run with wine, I just happened to get the winning one! I just know that that virus (whatever it was) did run when I ran it. It didn't run automatically.

Shane

[bodhi.zazen]

Thank you for the clarification, I think that information is much more helpful then your previous post.

wine is no more or less secure then any application, you need to guard against misconfiguration. Misconfigured servers or applications are obviously a security risk. Take caution that you are not circumventing security for convenience It is sooo easy to make that mistake.

In general, I advise you keep wine contained in ~/.wine and do not give it access to ~ or system files.

[shane2peru]

Thank you for the clarification, I think that information is much more helpful then your previous post.

wine is no more or less secure then any application, you need to guard against misconfiguration. Misconfigured servers or applications are obviously a security risk. Take caution that you are not circumventing security for convenience It is sooo easy to make that mistake.

In general, I advise you keep wine contained in ~/.wine and do not give it access to ~ or system files.

I'm either a risk taker or a slow learner or have a lot of trust in the team that develops wine, because I still give it access to about everything except the filesystem. However I'm a little more cautious in that I have a regular once a week scan of my system with good ole clamav. I'm far lessed concerned now that all the computers in my house are running Linux. Before I had a desktop running Windows XP with firewall and antivirus, that is how I found the virus on my usb stick. Since that time, I have been running wine without a problem and no viruses. It was a rare thing, and I ran it. I have had viruses pass through my computer but since I don't run them with wine, it is not a problem. Sorry for any unclarity in my previous posts.

Shane

[sanderella]

You guys are really scary, you are frightening little old ladies like me. I've got Wine, but never used it. Should I remove it?