Nick Thompson wrote: > So lets say that I get M$ Word running under wine, or I spash out on > CodeWeavers Crossover Office. If Word is running correctly, I assume > my pristine MDK installation has suddenly become vunerable to Word > Macro viruses. The Linux kernel doesn't have windows anti-virus > protection to save me from this, so is there anything I can do to > protect myself? I could backup each time I want to run it I suppose > ;-) Or maybe I've got it all wrong... Any ideas? > > Thanks, > Nick. > > > >------------------------------------------------------------------------ > >Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? >Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com > VERY wrong...
First of all, you won't get word to run on WINE because WINE handles only standard APIs, not the secret ones that Microsoft uses, which gives word and its macro facility DIRECT access to the Windows kernel. Crossover only emulates the access, certainly gives no access to the linux-kernel because it has only the privileges of the user running it... And unless you are running as root, you CAN'T WRITE TO /bin /usr/bin or anything else sitting in your executable path except perhaps your home directory. You might get a virus but it couldn't propagate. EVEN IF you were able to run as root (and deal with the poison red screen), and you were running Word, and you had a macro virus, it couldn't do very much because it isn't the windows kernel. The most likely result would be a segfault/kernel oops or a message about privilege violation. True, the linux kernel has no anti-virus features. They aren't needed. viruses are theoretically possible, and a few have been written, but they can't propagate, so they remain academic curiosities. Worms are theoretically possible, and a few have been written and they have played nasty games with systems that didn't stay updated (Yes, you can update easily without rebooting), but usually those exploits come out about 6 months after the fix is available. Civileme
Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
