- Create a new user
- Install IE on this new user
- Log with your normal user
- Do a “xhost +”
- sudo -u yourIEUser wine “YourPathToIE”

The malware could not compromise the system itself (unless it knew of a Linux exploit it could perform locally, perhaps over local network), however it could delete any and all data owned by the user running WINE. This can only happen, however, within the drives mapped by WINE, normally ~/.wine/drive_c/ or similar. Symlinks may allow exiting from this (I don’t know), however. Many WINE installs also have a Z: drive mapped to /, which would allow deleting (or amending) of any file on the system that can be deleted (or amended) by the user running WINE.

So, if you are worried about security, only map drives in protected folders, with contents you can afford to lose.

One more thing: many malware try and infect system files. WINE emulates a lot of the system files. Thus, malware cannot actually infect them (depending on the [builtin,native] orders), meaning that it is much harder to infect a WINE Windows system with malware than a real Windows system.

Hope this helps,

DaCrayZeeOne.