Two pcs and a wifi hotspot

Hi,

I have 2 pcs at home that use the same secure (WPA2-PSK) wifi hotspot. If one pc is infested with malwares and my other pc is clean, can the malware-infested pc affect the clean pc via the wifi hotspot router?

Thanks

 

Yes that is certainly a possibility especially if you catch a worm/virus which exploits vulnerbilities in your systems. It would be best to remove an infected machine from the WLAN once detected.

A good general rule of thumb to help mitigate this is to keep your computers patched and up to date. Run firewalls on the computers and set up both inbound and outbound rules. Having outbound rules increases the chance of catching and blocking something that tries to access your network without your knowledge.

If you are using a windows or Mac OS a good anti-virus is also needed on both.