Virus Questions

[ghall]

I'm really paranoid about viruses in Windows because my Dell got a virus and fried itself.
If you get a virus on your Windows partition, can it effect Mac OS X? Also, can viruses damage Macintosh hardware? Finally, is Windows Defender sufficient virus protection?

Thanks.

 

[apfhex]

Windows Defender protects against Spyware, not viruses AFAIK. To really protect your system you should have: Firewall, Anti-virus, Anti-spyware.

Chances are a Windows virus will only affect the Windows partition. It would have to do some really nasty stuff, like re-partition the whole drive to damage OS X. Also I've never heard of a virus that can damage the hardware, only situation I can think of is maybe overworking an already aging hard drive?

 

[ghall]

Thanks. I appreciate the response.

Any good antivirus apps? (Free ones, preferably)

 

[yellow]

WindowsXP (out of the box) cannot see/deal with HFS+ formated disks. Therefore, any generic virus/trojan/malware cannot see your OS X install (the HFS+ formatted volume) and therefore cannot do anything to it. At best it could nuke your NTFS/FAT32 partition.

That being said, it's possible if one had MacDrive installed on the WindowsXP partition that a virus/trojan/malware COULD see your HFS+ formated volume, and theoretically could nuke it.

or

A specially crafted piece of malware specifically designed to see and target HFS+ partitions could nuke your OS X install.

As noted, your first line of defense should be common sense use and current updates, followed by AV software, firewalls, and antispyware.



I have no idea how Vista may change any (or all) portion(s) of this equation.

 

[~Shard~]

My friend wrote a virus years ago that communicated with the controller of the hard disk and made it spin real fast causing the platter to physically crash, wrecking the HDD. That would do some damage regardless of OS/partition, but I doubt any viruses like that would be a viable threat anymore.

 

[ghall]

Hmmm.

So, let's say a virus did zap my Windows partition. Would it be possible to departition, and start from scratch?

 

[mischief]

Hmmm.

So, let's say a virus did zap my Windows partition. Would it be possible to departition, and start from scratch?

Yup. It's in bootcamp's options to nuke the Windows partition and start fresh.

 

[biggeek76]

Thanks. I appreciate the response.

Any good antivirus apps? (Free ones, preferably)

I use avast! on my pc - its free... don't have a mac yet, but just a few more days

 

[mkrishnan]

I use avast! on my pc - its free... don't have a mac yet, but just a few more days

There is also a Windows version of Clam. Clam is rapidly becoming the de facto OSS challenge to anti-virus software -- it gained enough steam that it will be the antivirus built into OS X Leopard Server. (P.S. here is the OS X front-end: ClamXAV.

 

[4JNA]

second the vote for the windows version of clam. works really well.

also recommend AVG as the newly released version works really well, is fairly fast, and has a great user interface.

 

[phungy]

But there is no need for any virus protection apps for OSX right? Or should I be careful?

 

[mkrishnan]

But there is no need for any virus protection apps for OSX right? Or should I be careful?

Basically the only time your computer is a threat is when you receive and pass along possibly infected files. Like even if you download illegal music, it can't give viruses to YOUR Mac. But if the files are transferred from your Mac to a PC, they still have viruses on them. In principle, the PC should scan them on entry whether they come from your Mac or not, but....

I have ClamXAV installed, and I run it occasionally out of curiosity. I had no viruses in my download files folder, but I did have some in my deleted e-mail.... suggesting for instance that those viruses had gotten through server-level cleansing.