I have installed wine and i am afraid that viruses will affect my PC now. I will not open any other .exe file other than mine one (which i use everyday)
Asked
Active
Viewed 3,892 times
6
-
1*Some* viruses will explore all drives. Which means, yes, they can infect your PC. Others only infect the system drive, which sounds bad, but remember, the system drive in Windows is C:/ which is a virtual drive in Wine. In other words, there'll only be one folder (and sub-folders) infected. Anyway, it's a Windows virus, it'll target system folders - for the virtual drive, not Ubuntu. Basically, they won't do much harm and you can just delete the virtual drive and re-install Wine. – Oct 19 '13 at 14:23
-
the most correct answer! repost your aswer as an answer not comment! – Oct 19 '13 at 14:24
-
done! plus added a bit extra – Oct 19 '13 at 14:26
-
@user204653 It's incorrect though. See my comment on the answer. – Oli Oct 19 '13 at 16:32
2 Answers
9
Can viruses run in Wine?
Yes.
Will inserting a CD with an autorun-enabled virus into an Ubuntu+Wine computer lead to the virus being loaded and the computer becoming infected?
No. You could enable that sort of autorun scripting if you really tried, but it's not something Ubuntu ships with.
What happens if you run a virus through Wine?
What happens if you run anything through wine? A virus is just an application that does particular things. If wine supports those things, they're going to work as designed. If wine doesn't, you're going to see a bunch of messy errors.
It's really not possible to give one answer that covers all viruses.
I generally consider it better to just avoid them in the first place.
What does a virus run under Wine have access to?
Having seen another answer claiming that Wine can't hurt anything, I think it's important to add that it's not true. Wine has access to more than enough to ruin your day.
For your convenience, your home directory is symlinked to My Documents. That means you can save things easily from Wine applications but it also means that even a basic virus could, for example, encrypt all your Ubuntu documents and hold them hostage.
-
3Some of the current ransomware (Cryptolocker http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CryptoLocker comes to mind) could be as disasterous if run under wine as if run under windows. – Fake Name Oct 19 '13 at 16:34
-
-
-
3
-
«but it's not something Ubuntu ships with» Unfortunately, recent versions of Ubuntu do ship with this "feature". – Andrea Lazzarotto Aug 01 '15 at 17:36
1
Some viruses will explore all drives. Which means, yes, they can infect your PC. Others only infect the system drive, which sounds bad, but remember, the system drive in Windows is C:/ which is a virtual drive in Wine. But, Wine redirects user folders to your ubuntu folders, so they could have an effect. In other words, your home folder could be infected. It's a Windows virus - it'll target system folders - for the virtual drive, not Ubuntu. Basically, they can do harm, but if they don't outside of the virtual C drive, you can just delete the virtual drive and re-install Wine.
-
3-1 Wine has full access to your home by default; it's symlinked in. A virus in Wine can be pretty devastating if it runs. – Oli Oct 19 '13 at 16:31
-
you mean how it redirects win user folders to ubuntu folders? Yes, I forgot about that. I already know that it can access other places though. Just other than the folder shortcuts, it can't edit other things through C unless you change settings. – Oct 19 '13 at 17:37
-
-
-
2Malware that goes through all your documents, encrypting them, and then demands payment for the key is common enough that I wouldn't primarily worry about effects on system folders—either on Ubuntu under Wine or on a Windows machine. (I'd also worry about keyloggers on the Windows machine, and other bank-account-stealing things) Data is far more valuable than an OS install! – derobert Dec 06 '13 at 13:44