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Date: Sat, 20 Mar 2010 16:04:18 +0530
Message-ID: <53b627ea1003200334t7cd37a2dy1eed8cc9429f7d6a@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Cygwin & Virus
From: Karthik Balaguru <karthikbalaguru79 AT gmail DOT com>
To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
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On Sat, Mar 20, 2010 at 3:17 PM, David Antliff <david DOT antliff AT gmail DOT com> wrote:
> 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.
>

Thx for the clarifications.

Karthik Balaguru

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