Can a malware bypass a virtual machine?

[ybriK]

Is it possible? Even with Guest Isolation turned off can a malware bypass a virtual machine? I've been playing around with malware (mainly trojans, keyloggers and adware) for around 3 months now and my host system seems fine. I always scan with mbam both safe/non-safe mode. Obviously I have a system image backup incase something happens.

[epeglab_1_]

Depends if the hard drive was partitioned. If not it could potentially lead to problems. but either way I am certain you should be fine. What you messing with anyway?

[ybriK]

Depends if the hard drive was partitioned. If not it could potentially lead to problems. but either way I am certain you should be fine. What you messing with anyway?

Just different types of malware, curiosity I guess and how they behave inside a non-protected system. Adware seems to be the most annoying out of them as pop-ups are everywhere, keylogger just sits in the background recording information as I can see it sending data under "Resource Monitor". Scamware/system hi-jack or whatever they're called looks the most "scariest" since I could literally not do anything to the virtual machine and had to revert to an earlier snapshot.

[Createinator]

If the disk is not partitioned or separate from your Windows Installation, Malware might(small chance) be able to infect your system. It is usually impossible to get out of Virtual Machine, unless you have some sort of connection between your host machine and the virtual machine.

[SImoHayha]

Is it possible? Even with Guest Isolation turned off can a malware bypass a virtual machine? I've been playing around with malware (mainly trojans, keyloggers and adware) for around 3 months now and my host system seems fine. I always scan with mbam both safe/non-safe mode. Obviously I have a system image backup incase something happens.

It really depends on the malware sometimes even with virtual machines it could infect your main system, ransomware does that alot.

[ybriK]

If the disk is not partitioned or separate from your Windows Installation, Malware might(small chance) be able to infect your system. It is usually impossible to get out of Virtual Machine, unless you have some sort of connection between your host machine and the virtual machine.

Hmm I see. Well the only connection between the host and guest is the network adapter drivers so that the guest can connect to the internet. I'm using VMware Workstation 10. To be more specific, Type 2 Hypervisor.

[OCing Noob]

Is it possible? Even with Guest Isolation turned off can a malware bypass a virtual machine? I've been playing around with malware (mainly trojans, keyloggers and adware) for around 3 months now and my host system seems fine. I always scan with mbam both safe/non-safe mode. Obviously I have a system image backup incase something happens.

 

Easily. a malware or trojan can bypass your windows fire wall VM Shells even if its off but USB and lan power is on . like many people leave computers like that these days using Erp off on Asus and Gigabyte On/off charge  . 

[ybriK]

[Kabini]

I assume that using a 2 different OS(Linux and Windows), on the virtual machine and host computer should minimize the chances of infection.

[vandidant]

The only avenue to infection that  I can think of would be VMware's integration features, possibly, but very unlikely if we're trusting that they made Workstation without any holes. Assuming you took all other precautions that is, sounds like you did.

[omniomi]

... 

 

Short answer: probably not but it's possible.

 

Long answer: For all intents and purposes a virtual machine is a distinct entity... "Partitioning" has nothing to do with it...

 

That said, all mechanisms by which malware and viruses typically spread within a LAN apply... file shares and any other form of file transfer between machines (emailing files to yourself, backing up to a third shared volume, etc.) If for example you were to mount a folder from your guest OS on the VM the malware could spread to that folder and if you accessed it on the host OS it could infect the host. 

 

Some hyper-visors will mount the host drive inside the guest automatically (VirtualBox used to do this) using their integration tools if you select some option in the setup... So on the guest go into Start -> Computer and just make sure there's no mapped drive back to the host. On both the host and the guest I would also take a trip into "Control Panel\Network and Internet\Network and Sharing Center\Advanced sharing settings" and disable network discovery.

[Mojo-Jojo]

It could be possible, it depends on which VM you use, how it implements virtualization and how well it was programmed. It is theoretically possible to break out of a VM.

Just assume that as two things rum on the same physical machine, or are even just physically connected in some way, they can infect one another.