Am I vulnerable to a virus now I have Parallels?

[davekaye101]

Dumb question probably, but I have just booted up Parallels on my Mac Book Pro and it's asking after all the virus update software. My question is...

Do I need to start worrying about viruses now and do I need to download all the protection? Can they effect my mac or only the virtual PC running within it?

Thanks!

 

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

Yes, there is a certain chance you can get viruses onto your virtual machine, especially if you use Windows for browsing, IMing and/or mail. Get a (free) virus scanner and you should be fine. I got myself a free years trial of eTrust® EZ Antivirus from CA just to stop XP nagging me...

The chances of any virus messing with the rest of your Mac is very small, it should be contained to the disk image, but you should be a bit careful with shared folders (I've seen people mentioning sharing their entire OS X home folder, and I wouldn't recommend that).

 

[HugMnster]

you can get avg for free or buy the paid version. I have put on avg for a few clients that had nortons anti virus software. I had put on some adaptived software that had problems with norton stuff an avg works pretty good.


jack

 

[iW00t]

Yes. It is possible for a virus to wrack a lot of havoc on your Mac.

After all the contents of your Mac's hard drive(s) are visible from a shared folder link, and IIRC applications running in the virtualised PC have almost total access on the contents of the host Mac. Meaning a virus or rogue program can just be run and completely wipe the contents of your home drive.

Even better, it doesn't even need to be a virus with signatures that scanners can detect. Any application can do it.