p2pnet.net News:- “It just isn’t fair that Windows users get all the viruses,” writes Matt Moen on News Forge.

“I mean really, shouldn’t Linux users be in on the fun as well?”

The answer is, of course, Yes and as Moen points out, thanks to the folks running the Wine project, Linux users can “catch the virus bug” too – sort of.

In case you’re wondering what the fermented product of the vine has got to do with virii, Wine is an open source implementation of the Windows API on top of X and Unix.

Back to Windows, “Out of the five Windows viruses I ran under Wine, not a single one was able to send email and propagate itself,” concludes Moen.

“When I went out of my way to be part of the Windows community by doing my part to propagate Windows viruses (lots of Windows users seem to think this is important, seeing as how they run random executables and use Microsoft Outlook and Internet Explorer) I discovered that it couldn’t easily be done with GNU/Linux tools. Oh sure, I could manually forward these viruses to the folks in my address book, but where’s the fun in that? Besides, these viruses usually lie in the From: line and use a handful of different Subject: lines. As a GNU/Linux user, I really don’t want to miss out on these important functionalities.

“I tip my hat to the creators of the SomeFool virus, for actually (albeit temporarily and minimally) affecting my Linux experience. However, if that’s the most damage I can get by running viruses with Wine under a dummy account, then it’s clear that the Wine developers have a long way to go before Wine is truly Windows compatible.”

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See:-
fun – Running Windows viruses with Wine, Source Forge, January 26, 2005

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