Security in a virtual machine

[daniel49]

Have wondered but not researched much, how much security does one need for a virtual machine?
On occasion, I run xp for instance fully patched , with the standard windows firewall ,inside of virtualbox in linux . And have always felt that was fairly secure as windows is, in a sense kept inside of its sandbox. Is this naive on my part or would you agree. thx for your input.

 

[lord_emperor]

Security concerns are pretty much the same, if you get keylogged then decide to do some online banking being in the VM doesn't do you any good.

There's no inherent security advantage to a VM.

 

[invidia]

Security concerns are pretty much the same, if you get keylogged then decide to do some online banking being in the VM doesn't do you any good.

There's no inherent security advantage to a VM.

So the host computer will also get infected, even if the virtual OS inside the sandbox was the one that, let's say, downloaded a keylogger? In his case, whatever affects the Windows OS will also have affects on his Linux?

 

[WobbleWobble]

If the guest OS is infected with a keylogger, it is extremely unlikely it will affect his Linux host.

Generally viruses cannot jump outside the hypervisor without other mechanisms such as shared folders. It doesn't mean it's impossible as there are proof of concept vulnerabilities that theoretically could allow a virus to cross through the hypervisor.

 

[0roo0roo]

yea it would take a pretty insane virus to jump onto the host. the vm has all the normal vulnerabilities, if you use it llike a real system it needs to be patched and up to date. if ur just dicking around and theres no personal info or important stuff then it doesn't matter. my guess is you could run all sorts of pirated software on a windows vm as long as it were specifically kept separate for such dirty tasks. it could be infected up the wazoo but if there were no info of value or even a network connection, it wouldn't matter.

 

[Pegun]

I think the best advice here would be to treat both the VM and he host machine as they are two separate computers on the same hubbed network. Anything that could go wrong between two systems in that case is exactly what you're exposing yourself to here.