Wine and security

[Carroll Grigsby]

On Sunday 20 May 2007 11:03:18 pm Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote:
> Carroll Grigsby wrote:
> > For no good reason other than curiosity, I installed wine today and then
> > loaded an old Windows program from the 98SE era. Kinda neat. Installing
> > wine required that I become root, of course, but I was able to install
> > the Windows program as a user. Given the emphasis on security in Linux --
> > and particularly in Fedora -- I was amazed. FWIW, the program in question
> > does not access the network, and I have SELinux disabled. Still...
> >
> > -- cmg
>
> Two things to keep in mind:
>  1. By default, the Windows program was installed in the .wine tree
> in your home directory.
>
>  2. When running, the Windows program only has as as much access as
> the user that launched it. Or even less access, depending on how you
> have Wine configured.
>
> In other words, you can mess up your own files, but not the system.
>
> Mikkel
> --
>
>   Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons,
> for thou art crunchy and taste good with Ketchup!

Mikkel:
Thanks for the reply. It was a bit of a shock to be able to install a program 
on a Linux system without having root privilege. I'll recover.

-- cmg