Do I need a anti-virus?
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Do I need a anti-virus?
Having a senior moment here. Running Mint 18 as the host, with Win7 on virtualbox. Do I need to have an anti-virus on the win7 since this is a virtual drive?
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Topic automatically closed 6 months after creation. New replies are no longer allowed.
Reason: Topic automatically closed 6 months after creation. New replies are no longer allowed.
Re: Do I need a anti-virus?
yeah - it would a wise thing, to have an anti-virus on the win-7 VB,
but you can just use the inbuilt Windows Defender as the A/V as that does work ok.
ie: you don't really need to install a purpose specific A/V - just use the W.D. option.
but - you don't need such a thing on the Linux Host, though.
but you can just use the inbuilt Windows Defender as the A/V as that does work ok.
ie: you don't really need to install a purpose specific A/V - just use the W.D. option.
but - you don't need such a thing on the Linux Host, though.
Please edit your original post title to include [SOLVED] - when your problem is solved!
and DO LOOK at those Unanswered Topics - - you may be able to answer some!.
-
Faust
Re: Do I need a anti-virus?
In terms of "safest possible " approach , then yes , running some kind of AV is a good plan ( as suggested by Pierre above ^^ ).
Personally I don't , because I would actually like my Windows VMs to get infected by something " in the wild " .
There's a connection with the sort of work I do .... it can be useful .
Malware researchers will deliberately infect the guest system to see how the malware works , then run the whole thing again ,
with various types of protection in place to test how they hold up .
That's the power and beauty of VMs ; you can be up and running again in seconds , even after totally trashing the guest system .
Snapshots are a great help for this and the feature is included in VirtualBox free ( but not in VMWare free , IIRC )
There are differing opinions about malware being able to "escape" the guest OS and infect the host .
I don't believe it's possible myself , but with a few provisos :-
" Drag-and-Drop " and any other file sharing between guest and host is disabled , and maybe also USB connectivity.
( I think that they are disabled by default .... I'll check )
But mostly I am reassured by running any Windows VMs in my Mint 17.3 machine
Personally I don't , because I would actually like my Windows VMs to get infected by something " in the wild " .
There's a connection with the sort of work I do .... it can be useful .
Malware researchers will deliberately infect the guest system to see how the malware works , then run the whole thing again ,
with various types of protection in place to test how they hold up .
That's the power and beauty of VMs ; you can be up and running again in seconds , even after totally trashing the guest system .
Snapshots are a great help for this and the feature is included in VirtualBox free ( but not in VMWare free , IIRC )
There are differing opinions about malware being able to "escape" the guest OS and infect the host .
I don't believe it's possible myself , but with a few provisos :-
" Drag-and-Drop " and any other file sharing between guest and host is disabled , and maybe also USB connectivity.
( I think that they are disabled by default .... I'll check )
But mostly I am reassured by running any Windows VMs in my Mint 17.3 machine
Re: Do I need a anti-virus?
The answer depends from the usage of Windows. If you do not use Windows of online activities, than you can disable the network interface for this VM completely and in this case you do not need any AV.