Virtual Machines.

I use Virtual PC 2004 with Windows 98 to play my old dos games and just had a thought.

Is it possible for a virtual machine to get a virus or attacked or anything like that? Within its own little bubble its a full fledged OS, it has access to the internet, even my router sees it a seperate machine. So that would make me think it can be attacked atleast somehow.

Its got no antivirus or firewall installed inside it, so if a virus did get inside could the virus actually 'work'? But as the virtual machines HDD is meerly a file sitting in my documents could it really do anything malicious? And if a VM can be infected, is it trapped inside the little bubble of the VM or can it jump out and do the nasty to my machine?

 

Virtual machines are just as susceptible to viruses as the actual host operating system if they are connected directly to the internet. Whether or not a virus could spread to the host or not is probably debatable, but I have heard of some viruses which have the capability of sidestepping the virtual machine and going straight for the host, although these are probably few and far between. You might want to check and see if your anti-virus program is capable of scanning the .VHD, .VUD and .VSV files used by Virtual PC (in fact it may already be doing so). If that's the case I'd say you're pretty well covered and the risk may very well be negligible.

 

Sure. The VM is just like any other PC. As for infecting your 'real' PC, I would guess that's dependant on the virus, but the Virtual PC sees the real PC as another networked PC, so the virus would have to be able to travel over the network, not so much 'direct' the local PC.

Great idea, btw! I gotta break out my copy of Jane's Longbow II!