Can Chromebooks be affected by malware from an SD Card?

Question

I've got an SD card that I think might contain infected files. However, those files are from my Windows days. I hear that Chrome OS is pretty hardy, and that it's really only posisble to get damage from apps and extensions. But if I were to, say, plug in an SD card that's got malware on it... what then? Sounds to me like giving it a free pass to the Chrome Zone...

My main concern is that whatever may be on the card could infect personal files on the Chromebook, and vice versa. I'm not too concerned about the system files, since I know Chrome OS runs every app in a sandbox and has that verified boot thing. Only thing that's got me worried is that the file viewer is just one app, so it seems to me like something could spread in there.

Perhaps worth mentioning is that the only types of files on it are mp3s, videos, and images. I'm willing to bet I'm probably alright, since I think those kinds of files only cause harm if opened in a specific application, but I don't know how every type of malware would act.

I'm aware that a lot of malware out there is only built for a specific OS, but I figured I would ask about it just to be safe.

Answer 1

In Chrome OS, all Android apps are running in emulation mode. We can say that due to that, there is some security advantages if we compare it to Android, especially that the device administrator permissions are unavailable on Chrome OS.

But even with that, hackers could always steal user data, phishing, hijacking CPU power (botnets and cryptomining)...

We can say that Android malware is the same as Chromebook's malware.