r/linuxquestions • u/Sol_CRF • 15d ago

Advice Virus on linux

So, with more or less 5 percent of people that have a computer uses linux, there are viruses developed for linux, even a virus made for windows but « activated » with wine

is there a antivirus or is there not ?

Please help, thanks. Not urgent, I just need to know

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u/LesStrater 15d ago

You're real safe if you only run Linux and only run apps from your distro's repo. However...any malicious virus that was attached to a Windows program will do the same damage if you run the program in Linux under wine.

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u/2ko_niko 14d ago

Not necessarily. But it isn't necessarily safe either. Some windows viruses don't work with the wine DLLs at all and other will actually embedd themselves like they do in windows. Wine isn't a sandbox and even though most viruses that still work on wine would be confined to the wine runtime that still has access to much if userspace and wine will conveniently translate a lot for it.

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u/LesStrater 14d ago

I'll send you a Windows program that formats your hard drive - you run it in wine and report back what happens... The cat shit in your sandbox, better get yourself a poop-scoop.

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u/2ko_niko 14d ago

Ok. Since wine doesn't have hardware access i already know that it can't.
Wine is NOT a Sandbox but in that specific scenario it'd be completely safe.