Can a virtual OS be infected?

  • Thread starter Thread starter pcnerd
  • Start date Start date
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pcnerd

I recently got the Antivirus XP 2008 virus on my PC. I had to reformat the
drive & reinstall XP Pro.

It got me thinking. If one uses Virtual PC or VMWare or some virtual OS
software & the virtual OS is infected, can the host OS also get infected? Can
the virtual OS get infected?

Thank you.
David
 
pcnerd said:
I recently got the Antivirus XP 2008 virus on my PC. I had to reformat the
drive & reinstall XP Pro.

It got me thinking. If one uses Virtual PC or VMWare or some virtual OS
software & the virtual OS is infected, can the host OS also get infected?
Can
the virtual OS get infected?

Thank you.
David
Click to expand...

If you don't use a virus protection program you can get infected.
 
pcnerd said:
I recently got the Antivirus XP 2008 virus on my PC. I had
to reformat the drive & reinstall XP Pro.

It got me thinking. If one uses Virtual PC or VMWare or some
virtual OS software & the virtual OS is infected, can the host OS
also get infected? Can the virtual OS get infected?
Click to expand...

A virtual OS can attract an infection just like any other OS. If the virtual
OS has access to the host OS's drive(s), and not just the virtual drive(s),
then theoretically the host OS could also get infected.

Security companies are aware of this way of bypassing a (host) OS's security
measures though, so I would not loose any sleep over it. A good firewall
will prevent an attacker from succeeding with this kind of tactics.

Charlie42
 
pcnerd said:
I recently got the Antivirus XP 2008 virus on my PC. I had to reformat the
drive & reinstall XP Pro.

It got me thinking. If one uses Virtual PC or VMWare or some virtual OS
software & the virtual OS is infected, can the host OS also get infected? Can
the virtual OS get infected?

Thank you.
David
Click to expand...


With most virtual systems (And I'm happy to stand corrected if wrong)I
think you can more or less take a regular "Snapshot" with the main OS
and therefore recovery is easy.

For example I have a machine that runs Ubuntu but also has XP and Vista
32 as VMs. It's very simple to copy the VM and make a backup (VirtualBox
in this case) so if it gets damaged just copy back over it.
 
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