Is an XP guest safer from malware?

[Maurice]

I have Pclos dual booting with XP plus I also have Windows XP as a guest in Pclos.

As a guest, is it as vulnerable to malware as the normally installed XP is or is it somehow 'protected' by being in a virtual box?

Thanks

[AndrzejL]

Vulnerable if connected to internet... VBox is not a "sandboxing" tool.

Regards.

Andy

[T6]

you need to put antivirus, enable firewall and don't open suspicious files

a virtual machines is just a machine with limited access to your real hardware, nothing special can be added to make it more secure without risking the stability

[parnote]

Agree with T6 and AndrzejL.

Win-anything isn't secure, even if ran in a virtual machine. You will still need to run anti-virus, anti-malware and anti-spyware software, if you want Win-anything to remain secure. However, if your virtual box copy becomes corrupted by any of the aforementioned plagues, you can either just reinstall, or even better yet, restore it from a pristine copy of your virtual machine (provided you kept a backup of your VirtualBox VDI file). Furthermore, any mal-anything that Windows-anything picks up should stay isolated to only that virtual machine, and should not have any ill effects on your host.

parnote

[ElCuervo]

I would say it depends on you. If you don't surf porn and other stupid websites, it's relatively safe. I have had WinXP running for over two years as an unprotected guest, and not once has anything bad happened. However, I don't do any web surfing on Windows - but then why would I? It's a simple mouse click to Firefox in Linux!

[Maurice]

Thanks for those very prompt replies chaps.

So now I know.

[cphayes0882]

Exactly, no porn and XP will run perfect forever....

[T6]

no porn?

terrible...

[Archie]

How about if one takes a snapshot of say, an XP install with everything you need but the internet is not connected? Then everytime one finishes with a session, they can always discard any current session which might be infected and revert back to that perfectly healthy snapshot?

That is possible.     

[T6]

yes but why bother?

i prefer to use pclinux, no snapshots required, not much to worry here

[Archie]

Then if it is easy to revert to a healthy XP install after infections, one does not have to install anti-virus software and can surf all the porn site they want ... done in virtual state.

It would be wise not to enable Shared Folder, especially if they have read/write access to any of your Linux folders.

[Maurice]

There's an interesting article on this at dedoimedo.com

You do not need anti-virus software. You do not need it in Windows, nor Linux. Blacklisting is an obsolete method of maintaining security of your operating system.

[Archie]

Just an after thought... how much approximately would a CPU+RAM be using when running an anti-virus program both in the background and a manual scan?

[Crow]

Do you want a light Anti Virus that does just what the others do and it's free? I just downloaded Placebo AV

Check it if you want    http://www.doxdesk.com/updates/2008.html#u20080129-placebo

I have it now in my taskbar and I'm sending it to all my friends   

[Archie]

Gotta love that fanfare ... Until then...

That'll scare all potential infections. Nothing to see, please proceed. And the Plus Pro is a steal for $30!

Now, where did I put that rope?