is web browsing in Virtual Machine safer????

joakim · 16 Oct 2010

DirtyElf said:

ive never used internet security and very light anti malware / virus protection and ive never had a problem.

Maybe because, depending on the type of malware, it's usually designed so that the target user should not notice it (it can perform its job peacfully in the background without anyone knowing).

Bullet proof vests was mentioned. I think that just to be on the safe side, it could become good practice to wear a gas mask while net surfing in the future. As we cannot with certainty say how bad malware/viruses may become, we cannot exclude the possibility that in some future point in time, the next generation of polymorphic malware can mutate in completely new and until now - unknown ways. Possibly, but not limited to, through power cables to your electricial socket and eventually spreading through the air, among humans...

Francis93 · 16 Oct 2010

Yes, it is safe to browse the Internet on Virtual Machines. You can browse malicious, dirty and dusty sites because VM's are isolated. They're placed in a virtual hard disk (VHD). Thus, whatever happens to your VM, the settings, files, programs, etc. doesn't affect your real environment. If it (the VM) fails because of malware infection, you can delete it and create a new one using virtualization software (e.g. VMWare, Oracle VirtualBox).

Night Hawk · 16 Oct 2010

mckillwashere said:

Night Hawk said:

Well I think one answer about browsing from a VM is you can run without any protections at risk or run with protections installed there and still get slammed or may see nothing at all. The VM has the main advantage however of adding a layer of isolation between that and the host OS.

I agree,
The company I work for manages hotel business centers. One of the companies we just bought out used a program called deep freeze. When the machine reboots anything hat was done on the machine is wiped and its like it was the last time it was configured. In a sense VM snapshots will work the same way. You get a virus, simply restore the snapshot from the last time you configured and its back to the way it was.

I have considered running a very similar setup strictly for sensitive surfing, bill paying, checking bank accounts, etc. Anything that would have information thats not good for malware to find.

With some VMs here the problem is not being able to save machine states since those require the live cd in the drive in order to load the live session. Once you close the VM any changes made are lost.

The snapshots only preserve the settings for the VM you tend to before running it as well as the power management type options while other things like screenshots and bookmarks for browsers other then IE still require an outside of vhd place to store them provided you have integrated components support as seen with the XP Mode.

The ideal safe browsing is not even with a VM but booting directly from a live cd. Since any malware can't infect the live OS's system structure you would need to be running only one from a select list to even have access to any physical drives to see any spread. Other then that when closing out a live session anything new is automatically lost not having a place to go.

The XP Mode on VPC or on the VM Lite Workstation is more vulnerable without protections due to the integrated components providing direct access to the drives on the host system a bug could still be spread by copying files over from the vhd or downloading to a main drive direct while browsing in one of those two options. For other VMs however they only typically see the D for optical like dvd media used by the installer or live distro and A for floppy when most systems now have none.

Whether browsing by VM or other here's something else you may want to look at. The 17 Most Dangerous Places on the Web

Bushman5 · 19 Oct 2010

Night Hawk said:

mckillwashere said:

Night Hawk said:

Well I think one answer about browsing from a VM is you can run without any protections at risk or run with protections installed there and still get slammed or may see nothing at all. The VM has the main advantage however of adding a layer of isolation between that and the host OS.

I agree,
The company I work for manages hotel business centers. One of the companies we just bought out used a program called deep freeze. When the machine reboots anything hat was done on the machine is wiped and its like it was the last time it was configured. In a sense VM snapshots will work the same way. You get a virus, simply restore the snapshot from the last time you configured and its back to the way it was.

I have considered running a very similar setup strictly for sensitive surfing, bill paying, checking bank accounts, etc. Anything that would have information thats not good for malware to find.

With some VMs here the problem is not being able to save machine states since those require the live cd in the drive in order to load the live session. Once you close the VM any changes made are lost.

The snapshots only preserve the settings for the VM you tend to before running it as well as the power management type options while other things like screenshots and bookmarks for browsers other then IE still require an outside of vhd place to store them provided you have integrated components support as seen with the XP Mode.

The ideal safe browsing is not even with a VM but booting directly from a live cd. Since any malware can't infect the live OS's system structure you would need to be running only one from a select list to even have access to any physical drives to see any spread. Other then that when closing out a live session anything new is automatically lost not having a place to go.

The XP Mode on VPC or on the VM Lite Workstation is more vulnerable without protections due to the integrated components providing direct access to the drives on the host system a bug could still be spread by copying files over from the vhd or downloading to a main drive direct while browsing in one of those two options. For other VMs however they only typically see the D for optical like dvd media used by the installer or live distro and A for floppy when most systems now have none.

Whether browsing by VM or other here's something else you may want to look at. The 17 Most Dangerous Places on the Web

thats what i have been doing for ten+ years...running various (almost 125 different ones) different Linux distros burned onto CD/dvd's, and running tottaly in RAM. (NO HD).

but of course i had to try out Windows.......

Night Hawk · 19 Oct 2010

You can't save anything on a live cd-r so no bugs have a place to go there!

Just be sure it's a cd-r or dvd-r and not any rws where data can still be written to the disk.

The only problem possible mainly seen with a Debian based distro like ubuntu, Knoppix, Puppy, Mint is being able to access different platforms on your drives while live where a bug could make it over especially if you have any specific folders designated for downloads instead of the "ask everytime where to" option seen.

There's some bugs out there waiting for the open source browsers as well as IE to watch out for!

Bushman5 · 19 Oct 2010

thans for your thoughts Nighthawk, appreciate the feedback :)

mckillwashere · 19 Oct 2010

Night Hawk said:

Just be sure it's a cd-r or dvd-r and not any rws where data can still be written to the disk.

Night Hawk,
I have used the Linux live disks before and attempted to use the a rw so I could save config files and data.... I did not have any luck, maybe the technology has changed since I last used it.

On other note I suggest a version called NimbleX they became one of my favorites very fast.

Night Hawk · 19 Oct 2010

As far as rws sometimes they can be a pain. You're not alone with those and why I usually will buy a container of 100 blank cd-rs to have onhand while flash drives have proven themselves the best option since you can wipe and reinstall or write an iso image for the latest "flavor" to them at any time.

Those are mainly onhand as live data recovery sticks however while browsing on a VM is one better option for preventing nasties from getting on the main system. The convenience is not needing a full restart to boot from any live media in order to run a VM also makes that method preferable over always reboot into this or that since you can easily see multiple OSs on a VM program.

mckillwashere · 19 Oct 2010

Yes I agree. VM is a better option, much better than a live cd. Granted if NTFS permissions are set right it wouldn't be to big of an issue :P

Night Hawk · 20 Oct 2010

The one thing to remember about all this is that most wouldn't even consider browsing by VM only. For most they select the browser they will use and browse from the main host and use VM mainly for running old programs on a VM.

Others like me prefer to test things as far as what will work on a VM or simply take a look at a new "flavor of the month" while having "business as usual" browsing with IE 8 or now the IE 9 Beta if not using another browser on 7.