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Viruses (in the strictest sense of the term)- perhaps, that depends on how MS handle x86 emulation (if at all).

Malware- definitely not. So long as shell scripting and other such interpreted code can still execute, malware can still be written. In fact with Office being ported to ARM, you instantly open up the problem that the same malicious VBA macros on x86 Office will work on ARM NT too. The same would be true for WSH, Powershell and even DHTML et al content. "

Also, if Windows NT and MS Office can both be recompiled for ARM, so too can any viruses or other malware also be recompiled for ARM.

Just about the only thing that needs to be retained (in order for Windows malware to still work on ARM) is that the OS API is still Windows. This means that the same source code can still be re-compiled for a different machine architecture.

That is probably exactly what Microsoft theselves did to make MS Offcie for ARM.

In the short term Windows on ARM won't have any malware, but if Windows on ARM reaches significant usage numbers, Windows malware for ARM will very soon also start to appear.

The essential features for malware are that: (1) the API must be consistent (so that source code can be recompiled), and (2) trade secret source code with binary only executables which are routinely distributed and installed by end users.

Windows for ARM will faithfully retain those two essential elements from Windows for x86.

Edited 2011-01-06 09:31 UTC

1) This is also a necessary for 3rd parties to write good software for a platform that can run on multiple version of the same operating system on multiple platforms.



Which isn't really a problem if people download the closed source executables from a reputable source i.e. the distributor.

If you downloaded a shell script for Unix/Linux without understanding from a random site and not understanding how it worked and just ran it, it would cause havok on your system as well.

Ergo the problem is user education not the fact that it is closed source. Funnily enough as a educated user I have no problems with viruses and malware even though I use both open and closed source applications.

But you will continue to push your anti-window/anti closed source agenda at every opportunity.

Edited 2011-01-06 10:24 UTC

That's an interesting point.

MS has talked (in the past) about continuing efforts to cleanly break the Win32 libs from any system-level entanglement.

Maybe this will also be an opportunity to move a little farther in this direction.