Safe to get a virus?

[EricF]

I've set up a virtual machine so that I can play around with some stuff, and
not care if I happen to download/install a virus on the guest machine.

Am I really safe from not infecting the host machine?

Two concerns come to mind:

1. I had to allow the IP address of the guest machine access to the host
machine (I had to let my firewall allow that IP address in order for the
guest machine to be able to connect to the internet) since they are sharing
the same ethernet connection. If the guest machine gets infected could it
access the host machine through the common connection to my ethernet router?

2. I installed "Additions" so I could drag and drop files between the host
and guest machines. If the guest machine gets a virus, could it use that
mechanism to "drop" a virus over to the host machine?

[Daniel Petri (MVP)]

The VM and the host are treated like 2 separate physical machines, and as
such, with badly-configured FW, shares and network settings, a virus can
"escape" the VM and infect the host. Allowing VMRC control of the VM +
allowing drag & drop is not making things better for you, but I don't think
a virus exists that can utilize these features on its own, they usually need
som dumb human to do the actual damage.

I haven't heard of a virus that "knows" how to escape the VHD file and
infect the host, as I said it's usually done just like 2 separate physical
machines.

However, it's most likely that there WILL be security issues specifically
related to VMs, and perhaps some already exist that I am not aware of, as I
am not a security expert.

--
Sincerely,

Daniel Petri
MVP, Senior IT consultant, trainer
www.petri.co.il
-----------------------------------

"EricF" <Er...@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:6E88C092-F43F-4952...@microsoft.com...

[Tim Walsh]

It's never safe to get a virus, and there have been some reports of viruses
that are able to infect the host from the VM. With that said, if you treat
both the host and VMs as separate machines and protect them accordingly with
firewalls, virus protection, etc you are reasonably assured that you won't
infect the Host from the VM.

"EricF" <Er...@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:6E88C092-F43F-4952...@microsoft.com...

[Robert Comer]

>1. I had to allow the IP address of the guest machine access to the host
>machine (I had to let my firewall allow that IP address in order for the
>guest machine to be able to connect to the internet) since they are sharing
>the same ethernet connection. If the guest machine gets infected could it
>access the host machine through the common connection to my ethernet router?

Possibly -- there are viruses that jump machines in a LAN and this
would be no different. You can block file sharing and netbios ports
from the guest on your host's firewall, and that should make things a
lot safer.

>2. I installed "Additions" so I could drag and drop files between the host
>and guest machines. If the guest machine gets a virus, could it use that
>mechanism to "drop" a virus over to the host machine?

There haven't been any known viruses that attack shared folders
specifically, but like the answer above, it a virus can jump via file
sharing, it's possible that it could be written to jump via shared
folders.

--
Bob Comer