Regarding Wine and Viruses

[TUA85550]

I understand the Wine can get viruses and could potentially infect your system. My question is if all I am using Wine for is Gaming and Microsoft Office, could I still get a virus? I mean if I load up FireFox (which is installed by default on Ubuntu) and go to a web site that has a virus, would I automatically become infected or the only way to get a virus is to load up FireFox (the windows version) from wine which would auto go straight into my wine directory.

I am a little confused and would love some clarification.

[Gert van den Berg]

On Fri, Aug 20, 2010 at 20:55, TUA85550 <[email protected]> wrote:

I understand the Wine can get viruses and could potentially infect your system.  My question is if all I am using Wine for is Gaming and Microsoft Office, could I still get a virus?  I mean if I load up FireFox (which is installed by default on Ubuntu) and go to a web site that has a virus, would I automatically become infected or the only way to get a virus is to load up FireFox (the windows version) from wine which would auto go straight into my wine directory.

If you stay eith trusted apps (and maybe run them though ClamAV (under
Linux / OS X) before installing them in Wine, keep your web browsing
off Wine, you should be fine....) (You DO want to scan PDF and Office
documents beforehand though...)

Windows vulnerabilities that often result in a (unpatched) Windows PC
getting infected by just being on and on the internet won't affect
Wine, since it doesn't include any network facing services... Office
macro virusses will run though, as might any exploits targeting
office... (You would still need to open the file within the
application under Wine...)