Just a fun, somewhat terrifying read

        • @[email protected]
          link
          fedilink
          English
          27 months ago

          Actuall, no. If a VM can be broken, how come everyone goes on about things being perfectly safe to run in one?

          It gives people like me a false sense of security.

          • @[email protected]
            link
            fedilink
            English
            17 months ago

            Exactly. And you can see by the number of upvotes your comment got vs the number of downvotes earned by mine that a false sense of security is shared by the majority.

      • slazer2au
        link
        English
        -17 months ago

        VM does not mean it is safe. There is malware out there that can break the sandbox and infect the hypervisor

        • @extracheese
          link
          English
          207 months ago

          Such an exploit would not get wasted on some random xp honeypot

          • slazer2au
            link
            English
            37 months ago

            It’s XP, there are likely several unpatched escaping bugs with free POC out there. You don’t need anything new.

            • Zagorath
              link
              fedilink
              English
              207 months ago

              Surely breaking out of a VM requires exploiting a vulnerability of the VM, not of the OS running in it?

              • slazer2au
                link
                English
                47 months ago

                I would assume it requires both a hypervisor and guest OS bug to be tripped.

                • @yggdar
                  link
                  English
                  47 months ago

                  It’s pure speculation, but I assume you’ll need

                  1. Enough access to the guest OS so that you can interact directly with the virtual hardware. That would probably require root access, so you’ll probably need to exploit some bug in the guest OS to get there.
                  2. To break out of the vm, you’ll then need to exploit a bug in the virtual hardware. You would want to get the hypervisor to execute arbitrary code.
                  3. If you want to infect the host OS, then you’ll need sufficient access on the host. If the hypervisor doesn’t run with sufficient privileges, you’ll have to exploit a bug in the host as well to perform a privilege escalation. But I’m guessing the hypervisor will usually have sufficient privileges, so exploiting the host is probably not necessary.

                  Sounds like quite a bit of work, but I don’t see why malware couldn’t automate it. An up-to-date hypervisor should help reduce the risk though.

                  • @extracheese
                    link
                    English
                    57 months ago

                    Theres no way an hypervisor zero day gets implemented in some random Malware. Those are worth millions and are used in coordinated manual attacks against VIP targets

                • @pivot_root
                  link
                  English
                  17 months ago

                  It’s XP. There’s guaranteed to be a way to go from userland to ring 0 code execution.