The title says it all. I have searched, and can't seem to find a situation exactly the same as mine. I have Paragon NTFS installed, so OS X CAN write to NTFS drives (namely my Boot Camp partition). I do not have any antivirus on Mac, as it is simply a waste of system resources. I DO have MSE installed on my Boot Camp partition (which is running Windows 7 64 bit by the way). Could I inadvertently pick up a virus in OS X and have it somehow infect my Boot Camp partition? Any knowledge would be much appreciated.
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Can Windows viruses acquired in OS X infect the boot camp partition?
- Thread starter axu539
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The answer is rather complicated.
Windows viruses cannot RUN in the Mac OS X environment, so they cannot do anything at all if picked up there. However, if infected files are then copied to your Windows partition, you reboot into Windows, and try to load/run them... that's when you could get infected.
Windows viruses cannot RUN in the Mac OS X environment, so they cannot do anything at all if picked up there. However, if infected files are then copied to your Windows partition, you reboot into Windows, and try to load/run them... that's when you could get infected.
As alluded to above, a virus is fundamentally a program with a malicious intent of some form. It can only be run in the environment it was designed for whether it's Windows or Mac.
Therefore, a Windows virus wouldn't be able to execute within the Mac environment (e.g. if you downloaded a Windows .exe virus in your email) and hence it wouldn't be able to infect your boot camp partition.
However, if you downloaded a Mac virus whilst in Mac OS, there's nothing stopping it from treating the Boot Camp partition as just another drive and infecting files on there especially if it has read/write access.
The exception to the first point above is if you are running virtualisation of Windows (e.g. Parallels) in which case it can happen whilst running Mac OS X (because your'e also running Windows simultaneously).
A question to the punters out there- are there any viruses identified yet which are capable of taking advantage of dual boot operating systems? AFAIK there aren't but who knows what can happen in the future (e.g. a Mac virus which identifies you have a Boot Camp partition and dropping a Windows virus executable into your Windows start up!).
Therefore, a Windows virus wouldn't be able to execute within the Mac environment (e.g. if you downloaded a Windows .exe virus in your email) and hence it wouldn't be able to infect your boot camp partition.
However, if you downloaded a Mac virus whilst in Mac OS, there's nothing stopping it from treating the Boot Camp partition as just another drive and infecting files on there especially if it has read/write access.
The exception to the first point above is if you are running virtualisation of Windows (e.g. Parallels) in which case it can happen whilst running Mac OS X (because your'e also running Windows simultaneously).
A question to the punters out there- are there any viruses identified yet which are capable of taking advantage of dual boot operating systems? AFAIK there aren't but who knows what can happen in the future (e.g. a Mac virus which identifies you have a Boot Camp partition and dropping a Windows virus executable into your Windows start up!).
Actually, there are ~3 known hybrid Windows/Linux viruses that can be especially destructive on dual-boot Windows + Linux configurations. However, I know of 0 Mac + Windows hybrids.
This won't work for most users for a few reasons. First, there ARE no Mac viruses in the wild that can run on current Mac OS X.
Mac Virus/Malware Info
Second, in order for Mac OS X to write to the Boot Camp partition, not only would read/write have to be enabled, you would also have to install NTFS-3G to write to the NTFS-formatted Windows partition, since native Mac OS X can't write to NTFS.
NTFS (Windows NT File System)
- Read/Write NTFS from native Windows.
- Read only NTFS from native Mac OS X
- To Read/Write/Format NTFS from Mac OS X: Install NTFS-3G for Mac OS X (free)
- Some have reported problems using Tuxera (approx 33USD).
- Native NTFS support can be enabled in Snow Leopard, but is not advisable, due to instability.
- Maximum file size: 16 TB
- Maximum volume size: 256TB
Anyone who enables r/w and installs NTFS-3G should be knowledgeable enough to know the risks, but even then, they'd have to wait until someone writes a Mac virus and releases it in the wild, where the user could hunt for it and find it. The bottom line is, this vulnerability is possible, but it would take a lot of deliberate effort to make it work.
As I said in the original post, I have Paragon NTFS installed (same as NTFS-3G), AND I do have read/write privileges on my Boot Camp partition. But, like you and everyone else are saying, since the virus needs to be executed in OS X to infect that other partition, infections are unlikely. Thanks for your response!
Just curious though, my Boot Camp partition was r/w enabled by default. Is that required for Boot Camp to work, or is there some way to disable it (just in case)?