Virus on Virtual PC

It shouldn't. The virus will be completely Windows based (most likely,) and even if copied to your OS X filesystem, couldn't even do anything since the OS/CPU can't run it anyway. Unless of course someone actually designed a virus to leverage the OS integration of Virtual PC to get a cross-platform virus loaded, but I think said someone would realize his time would be better spent. ;-) In a nutshell, don't worry about it.
 
I'll have to second that, and add a little more insight as well... VirtualPC uses one, big file to store the Windows OS as well as any other programs you load into that virtual OS... so any virii would be contained within that file as well. The only way you could get the virus even ONTO the OS X portion of your disk would be to copy it there. And, as davidbrit2 said, it wouldn't run anyway.

The only thing that a Windows virus can harm in Virtual PC is the Windows OS you have loaded in Virtual PC. And if you have more than one Windows OS loaded in Virtual PC, the virus is going to be contained to the Windows installation that was affected -- it's not gonna "jump" to your other Windows installations.
 
Nice way to study virus and worms, huh? You can see what they do to the windows system without any effects on your own machine..
But what about boot-virus? I have to admit I have no idea what they really do, but I remember ppl telling me those can damage hardware. So, how much hardware access does virtual pc provide to the windows os?
 
Since the hardware is actually emulated through VirtualPC, the worst (or best) you could do is emulate hardware failure. It couldn't actually damage your Mac hardware at all.
 
well, the processor is emulated and I suppose the graphiccard as well. everything else doesn't have to be (nic, ram..).

I had once a floppy-disc full of viruses. But they were for MSDos 5.0! ;)
 
I have a friend who collects windows viruses. Maybe he could suggest some viruses to try... :D
 
senne said:
Good, i'm going to launch a virus then! Anyone have a suggestion for a virus?
Click to expand...

I nominate that for Best Post Ever.

And Giaguara, that reminds me of Ghostbusters. ;-)

Jeanine: "Do you have any hobbies?"
Egon: "I collect spores, molds, and fungus."
 
Well, on the topic of boot virii... they cannot do damage through Virtual PC. These work by over-writing the flash BIOS in a PC (only works in the recent machines with flashable BIOS chips), sometimes with malicious code, or code that does nothing. Since the Mac has Open Firmware, and flashing the ROM on a New World Mac is different from flashing the BIOS ROM on a PC. This means the PC virus couldn't flash the ROM on a Mac if it wanted to.
 
Please stay away from using VPC as a testbed for virus/worm programs. While your Mac won't be harmed, you might harm other computers on the same network. If VPC is connected to the internet, you'll propagate the virus/worm quite probably.
 
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