Malware under wine

[Ameeryan]

Hi
Can wine be infected by the malware?
I can guess that it could not damage the full operating system. But I think some portion of system will be surely infected. I can think of
1) worm can email copies of itself to other ID
2) Spyware can go through my hard drive for credit card information.
3) Trojan can load a child porn which could infected your connected mobile.
I am always very careful while installing software's but I think wine can cause problems for me. It is always better to have an antivirus so that before installation you can scan them, under wine. Anyone else here know about this?

[Glenny]

Hello
Wine is just a translation layer and not the emulation of windows kernel. I think the windows virus can only run to some areas, but they can of-course download illegal material, but you can not loose the whole operating system. Yes, some real bad virus can effect the software's in wine. I think you should have a separate prefix for everything that you like to install. This can help in isolating the bad bugs. It is uncommon that virus in wine can cause damage to your linux operating system. I would recommend not to use wine as a root user.

[Macarenas]

Hi
I this is much a part of common sense. The first thing people get attached by the malwares and the spywares is because they are careless. They just keep on opening the files again and again. I have no much idea of the wine working, but one of my friends told me that it can catch some nasty windows stuff. Finally just be cautious to what and how you run the software's.

[Xmen]

Hi
Just one of the instant with me, I was running IE6.5 from a web site under wine. I can say that I was catches by a virus under wine and I have also installed it. So I think wine acts the same way as the windows do. I think most of the viruses can attach you through emails, clients, browsers and downloads. So be careful.

[Ameeryan]

Hi

I was running IE6.5 from a web site under wine.

I think you mean IE 5.5, there is no IE6.5 upto my knowledge. Actually I am still trying to use IE on my linux operating system. Once I have installed IE4 on my linux, but running it would crashed the wine. Does any one know how to clean up the infected wine installation?

[JonathanD]

Hi

Does any one know how to clean up the infected wine installation?

In your /home directory you will find the wine folder, the best and the safest way if to delete the folder from there. I think the ~/.wine folder is not a good choice for everything to install.
Create clean and separate prefixes with:

wineprefixcreate --prefix /home/<user>/mywineapp

And to start apps in different prefixes:

env WINEPREFIX="/home/<user>/mywineapp" wine app.exe