If you've read the recent mailing list posts dating up to a few weeks back I think, there have been some cases. But like everyone said, the fact the malware would even run in itself is almost bittersweet. It is bug-for-bug though so you can't just do that. Possibly an 'msconfig' like thing would be more realistic you know where you control (in a poor poor pooooooor way,) what runs at startup. yo ucould even go as far as to show the programs in the gnome-sessions program or the kde equivilent, thought that would be a pain (though cool.)
On 2/12/07, John Smith xixsimplicityxix@gmail.com wrote:
Part of my confusion what usage pattern is contracting malware on wine in the first place
On 2/12/07, richardvoigt@gmail.com richardvoigt@gmail.com wrote:
On 2/12/07, James Hawkins truiken@gmail.com wrote:
On 2/11/07, richardvoigt@gmail.com < richardvoigt@gmail.com> wrote:
On 2/11/07, Misha Koshelev mk144210@bcm.tmc.edu wrote:
Hi everybody,
Thanks for your suggestions. I just posted a new patch on
wine-patches
where I tried to incorporate these and now it does the following
(in
addition to my previous patch which just started items in the
StartUp
folder):
- When wineboot finds a file that it wants to start in the StartUp
folder, it asks the user whether he wants to run the program. His options are: Always, Yes, No (default), and Never.
- If he selects Yes the program is run, if he select No it is not.
- If he selects Always or Never, I create a registry key in:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Wine\StartupItems with the full
pathname
of the program and the value "always" or "never." When wineboot
sees
this program in the StartUp folder it checks this key, and if it
is
set it performs the appropriate action.
What do you guys think? If you like the system, it would be pretty
easy
to incorporate this into the run key running as well (which are currently just run without any user confirmation)?
This sounds almost perfect. I think the counterpoint raised by
James
Hawkins would be adequately addressed by adding a winecfg option as follows:
Startup items behavior: (*) Silently allow <-- This is "bug-for-bug
compatibility"
( ) Ask <-- Most computer-savvy folks
would want this
( ) Silently block ( ) Block and notify me
This is unnecessarily complicated, and i really doubt anything like this would ever make it into the Wine tree.
Perhaps this should be independently set for each kind of startup
item
(startmenu\programs\startup, registry run key, profile settings,
etc),
but I think that's not really necessary.
Also, I would suggest that the list of approved start items be
stored
outside of winespace, so that malware can't bypass the protection by setting the key. Of course, really nasty stuff could still call
into
Linux, but that would require some hybrid system that was aware of
the
ELF dynamic loader in order to not fall afoul of address space randomization.
Ultimately I think wine is about more than just running Windows-compatible programs without the Microsoft tax. It's about running those programs without ceding control of your computer to an untrustworthy party. We don't want the limitations that Windows imposes... true bug-for-bug compatibility would mean only being able
to access files on a FAT or NTFS partition, but I don't hear anyone advocating for that kind of crippling behavior.
What? Wine has nothing to do with which file system your files reside
on.
You advocated that wine aim for working exactly like Windows, no less and no more, rather than deviating in user-configurable ways to enhance the user's control over his own system. Maybe while we're at it, wine should have the bug which allows certain software to prevent screen grabs. No, I think defeating DRM to enable fair use is perfectly reasonable, and there are some bugs which should be fixed. Should wine try to patch remote exploits at the exact same rate as windowsupdate.com? That would be also be required for true bug-for-bug compatibility. After all, someone properly authorized might be using that backdoor to reboot their webfarm remotely -- not!
There are things that are wrong in a theoretical sense (i.e. the Pentium floating-point bug), or misclassification of Unicode characters, which some programs might reasonably depend on. And then there are things that are wrong from a practical engineering perspective, like software taking away the user's choice to not run it, which the mere fact that a program depends on it makes it malware.
Asking if you want to run every file set for startup in wineboot every single time is crippling behavior, not to mention annoying. UAC anyone? If you're so worried about this "malware", create a reduced privileges account just for Wine.
That's the point of a "remember my choice" or "Yes/No/Always/Never" option on the prompt which appears when the winecfg option is ask...
Reduced privileges do little or nothing to prevent network abuse (open spam relay and the like).
Thanks Misha
p.s. please please please anyone who is familiar with IShellFolder
if
you could look over those parts and just say yes it looks good
that
would make me feel better. I think it is correct but really an
expert's
opinion would be great.
-- James Hawkins