PRESS: run windows viruses with wine ...

[Troy Rollo]

On Fri, 28 Jan 2005 01:29, Brad DeMorrow wrote:
> I took the time to explain to each person that many of the viruses that
> plague the windows users are simply because of the insecure OS and
> applications such as Outlook or Internet Explorer.  If one managed to
> get a windows virus under wine - they would most likely have to do it
> manually, which is possible - but a lot easier to protect against.  Just

If they're running Outlook Express under Wine as their email client it's just 
as easy to get a Windows virus or worm as it is under real Windows. Whether 
there are any permanent effects depends only on how the virus or worm hooks 
into the system and whether the user runs wineboot.

Even if they don't run Outlook Express, with Linux 2.6 there is a facility to 
have the kernel recognise foreign executable file formats and run them by 
means of another executable. If used to run Wine executables (and somebody 
on /. yesterday indicated they had done this), it makes Windows executables 
as easy to run as native Linux executables ("program.exe" works just as well 
as "wine program.exe" in such a case).