Malware on Wine review

[Ben Klein]

2009/2/24 Zachary Goldberg <zgold at bluesata.com>:
> 2009/2/23 Dan Kegel <dank at kegel.com>:
>> Ben Klein <shacklein at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> http://www.avertlabs.com/research/blog/index.php/2009/02/23/running-windows-malware-in-linux/
>>>>
>>>> "Do not set the file association for Windows executables with Wine.
>>>> This would enable running Windows executables in Wine by simply double
>>>> clicking them."
>>>>
>>>> I saw a patch floating by to turn this on by default recently.  Maybe
>>>> we should make it off by default, but easy to turn on...?
>>>
>>> This would annoy all the people that the association targets. We can
>>> either make it easy to run all Windows apps (malware and legit) via
>>> file manager, or none at all.
>>
>> Yes, exactly.  The default should be off, and it should be easy to
>> turn on.
>> - Dan
>
> I disagree on this point.  Is malware via Wine on Linux really a
> problem commonly affecting users?  What happened to replicated
> Window's behavior bug for bug?  User X might ask: double clicking an
> exe works in Windows why shouldn't it in Linux?  Why should user X
> have to go through an extra step to do something on Linux than they
> would on Windows?

Thing is, this is not something that's explicitly within Wine. It's
desktop integration at best, and file manager-specific at worst. I'd
say it doesn't fall under the heading of "bug-for-bug compatibility".

That's just me though. Comments from real Wine devs would be much more
meaningful :)