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Date: Sat, 20 Mar 2010 22:47:43 +1300
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Subject: Re: Cygwin & Virus
From: David Antliff <david DOT antliff AT gmail DOT com>
To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
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On Sat, Mar 20, 2010 at 20:42, Karthik Balaguru wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 14, 2010 at 7:12 AM, David Antliff wrote:
>> On Sun, Mar 14, 2010 at 13:26, Karthik Balaguru wrote:
>>> Since cygwin is a windows utility that provides linux environment.
>>> What is the probability of the linux environment to get infected by
>>> virus ?
>>
>> Hello Karthik,
>>
>> I don't entirely understand your question - are you asking whether a
>> Windows virus infection can affect files manipulated by Cygwin on that
>> same system? I would imagine the answer is yes if Cygwin is using
>> standard OS facilities to read/write files.
>
> Yeah, You are Correct. My actual question was related
> to this query. I was eager to know if the files touched by
> cygwin(Linux environment) would get infected due to an
> virus in Windows system ?

Cygwin is just an application library upon Windows - there's no
isolation from Windows. If something screws with Windows, then Cygwin
can be affected too.

> This is other thought that i had in my mind while thinking
> about protecting files in linux environment(Cygwin) against
> that of windows. Is it possible ?

Cygwin isn't Linux. It just feels like Linux because many of the same
applications are provided. But it isn't Linux.

> Thinking over the similar lines, another query popped up
> in my mind - Is cygwin more vulnerable to Windows based
> Virus or Linux based Virus ?

Cygwin isn't Linux, so it's not vulnerable to Linux-based viruses at
all really. Cygwin is just an application on Windows, so yes, Cygwin
is vulnerable to Windows based viruses and I'd imagine almost
completely immune to Linux-based viruses unless they are silly Perl or
shell script worms for example.

That said, a security issue affecting something like OpenSSH could
also be a problem in Cygwin. It really depends on where the root cause
of the problem is that allows the issue to arise.

In a nutshell - Cygwin is part of Windows. It's not an operating
system in its own right. It's definitely not Linux. It just happens to
do a lot of things that Linux can do because the same applications
(like perl, bash, emacs, etc) are available.

Hope this is helpful - if not, perhaps tell us what you want to achieve.

-- David.

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