Can virus affect outside virtual machine?

[ABHILASH BARI]

When I connect pendrive to the pc, it connect in virtual machine if open, but my question is that if pd connected first of all origional os,then virtual machine,within that short time span could virus enter in origional os? I'm using widows 7 outside and windows xp in virual os.

 

[Hrishi]

It could be possible. Virus don't take too much time to replicate , but it largely depends what sort of virus it is . Some virus start infecting the host PC only when the drive is accessed or the file containing the Virus is executed.

It would be best if you can scan the system with a good A.V.
Additionally you should also disable any sort of sharing b/w Host machine and the VM server/OS.
Not all virus are capable of spreading through V.M. to host machine , but there have been cases like that so why to take chances.

 

[harshilsharma63]

As Rishi stated, if there isn't any shared folder between the VM and win 7, then chances of malware spreading are very low. But still, you should always scan the pendrive for malwares.

And one more thing, the OS running in the VM is called 'guest OS' and the outside os is called 'host OS'.

 

[deepakkrishnan]

But your virtual machine is running as an app on a base OS wherein the base OS would be detecting your pen drive when you connect it to the computer. So by transitive property you would get affected.

But if you're working in Virtual machine and you get affected by a virus that you might have downloaded from the internet then the chances of it affecting outside of that environment would be very low. It'll act like a quarantined area.

I hope i'm right ???

 

[Zangetsu]

yes..virus will affect outside the VM environment if autorun.ini is not blocked by AV

 

[tanmaymohan]

It may affect your host too if it replicates over network