Viruses?

[wisdomless]

My friend is a little skeptical about installing wesnoth on his computer (he uses windows) and is worried about viruses. Has anyone ever reported getting a virus from wesnoth? Or a major bug that trashes their computer?

[Guest]

My friend is a little skeptical about installing wesnoth on his computer (he uses windows) and is worried about viruses. Has anyone ever reported getting a virus from wesnoth? Or a major bug that trashes their computer?

He is less likely to get crapware installed with Wesnoth than with a normal commercial game. (That is one of the selling points for OSS.)
If he is worried about a bug in the software being exploited, that is possible. You certainly don't want to download stuff from unofficial campaign servers until 1.0.1 comes out.
I recently found that the campaign server and client were both a bit lax about trusting data given too them. The official server is fixed now an people can't put campaigns on it that exploit the hole any more.
There could certainly be other bugs lurking that might be exploited in multiplayer games. However I would expect Wesnoth to be better than most commercial software in this regard.
Playing single player should be safe unless one of the developers goes rogue.
Also all of above risks can be mitigated against by running the game as an unprivileged user.
For example when I run NeverWinterNights I run it as its own user and block that user's access to most of the network. The program can't easily phone home. There are things it could do if it knew more about its environment, but the normal phone home network connection won't work.
I think currently if could tunnel over DNS or send mail messages or run ping and put data in the IMCP packets.
Once I know more about how to use selinux, it won't even be able to do that stuff.

[dtw]

If i he is worried about virii why does he not get a virus checker?

[xtifr]

If i he is worried about virii why does he not get a virus checker?

"Viruses" -- even if the word were Latin (and its not), the proper plural would be "viri," not "virii". I have no idea why people think it needs two "i"s. There is a modicum of typical geek humor in "viri", but "virii" is just silly. ("Silly" is me being polite because I like dibble; my actual opinion is much less printable.)

The simplest solution to viruses is to use a system that isn't susceptible to them, such as Linux, BSD or MacOSX. If you foolishly insist on sticking with a plague-ridden unstable monstrosity of a system, then you can either, as dibble suggests, get a virus scanner, or compile the system yourself from source, or both.

In general, if you have to ask, your system is probably already so full of viruses and spyware that it's probably amazing it's still able to run!

[Chrispinator]

Hi, I'm the skeptical friend.

The laptop I want to install the game in is brand new and is a gift from my parents to me. In the past my family has had some problems with spyware such as the huge natorios "coolwebsearch". My Dad is out of town until thursday, and I'm going to be leaving for Bible College on Friday, all the way to Brazil for 5 months. My laptop is going to be my major means of communication with my parents, which is very important to me. If I do anything to mess up my VPN connection, I wont be able to get it fixed because my Dad (Computers for a living) wont have time to fix it. I don't wanna put Linux in it just yet either because I'm not sure how my Dad will fly with that or the fact that I have to install a lot of other stuff to play games that run on windows. I also don't have all the virus scanners that my comp upstairs has. (Which by the way can't even get rid of "coolwebsearch". I just want to know if there are people out there that run Windows that didn't detect any "attachments" to the game when installing.

[wisdomless]

Thanks guys. I'm sure he'll be glad to hear this.

[wisdomless]

How did you post ahead of me? And by a full 30 minutes! That's just nonesense!
And why are you a guest? Why not create an account? Aren't you supposed to be at work? What's going on!?

[Yogibear]

We have a wrong order of posts every now and then.

Well, i am one of those windows users. I play the game for about two months now and i haven't sensed any "abnormal" activities of it. I also have the source code on my laptop and i am working on that. I need my computer for work, too, and it will probably cost me at least a week to get it in the state it is now if i have to reinstall completely.

If you are still skeptical (which is a good attitude on the internet), read a little bit through the forums. It will get you an impression, what kind of people are around here. Most all of them are friendly, helpful and nice. A little bit harsh maybe once in a while but always respectful, even if you are new to everything. What they don't like is showing off too much or people that think everyone here is meant to fulfill their wishes.

For my part, i trust these guys. I didn't regret it so far.

[Chrispinator]

Yah, and I do believe if this game gave off any sort of virus or spyware, people would be complaining about it on these boards, but all I've been seeing is bugs in the game. I will download the game and thank you all. Cheers. -Chris

[wisdomless]

Yeah Chris! Now I can crush you online. We'll have a good time. And we're sad you didn't go last night. It was fun. I was on top of my game. They made fun of me for making fun of them, but I had fun making fun of them. They enjoyed my off handed, dry humor. Oh and Johannah is really sorry about yesterday. REALLY sorry. She said because she's only talked to you face to face once (or twice), it was hard for her to recoginize you. She said she's going to youth group and hopes to see you there.
Catch you later man.

[Viliam]

I use a reliable antivirus, and so far, there have been no problems. My computer has never crashed due to Wesnoth, and I have tried a few versions in recent two years.

I think the Wesnoth in itself is reliable... Do not download custom scenarios, because there the quality control is much lower.

(To compare with another software produced in similar way, it is IMHO safe to download Firefox, but not very safe to download Firefox "extensions".)

[Guest]

@Chrispinator:

Wesnoth itself is perfectly safe, don't worry.

To protect your computer, download & install the following programs:

1.) AntiVir (Free antivirus software, daily updates)
http://www.free-av.com

2.) xp-Antispy (to disable WindowsXP spy functions)
http://www.xp-antispy.org

3.) SpyBot Search&Destroy (to find and disable all other spyware)
http://www.spybot.info

4.) ZoneAlarm (Free Firewall)
http://www.zonelabs.com/store/content/c ... lid=nav_za

You're (quite) save then, I'm using WinXP and have never had any virus problems.

-Alex

[scott]

@Chrispinator:

Wesnoth itself is perfectly safe, don't worry.

To protect your computer, download & install the following programs:

- a bunch of programs

To protect your computer, download & install the following programs:

- Linux

[wisdomless]

Yeah Chrispinator, get Linux! Hey, email me an email to my email so I can email you telling you to email me an email. So we can set up a time to play wesnoth.

[Emmanovi]

Yep Scott, definetly get Linux.

One of the main reasons for this is virus/spyware/adware makers don't think about/understand/know linux. They make everything EXE files. So unless you have Wine set to auto-excecute, you should be safe in that area.

(AFAIK).