VMs & their host

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Poochlookers
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VMs & their host

Post by Poochlookers » Tue Mar 03, 2015 7:06 pm

Quick question about VMs

When a VM accesses the internet through the host what information about the host is exposed\revealed ?

What if the VM accesses the internet through a network interface by itself ( a USB wifi adaptor) ?

What about a VPN connection on the VM itself ?

What would be the best way to have a VM connect to the internet while exposing the host little as possible.

I ask my questions because I am trying to decide whether to "explore and learn" from a VM hosted on a machine I use for personal matters or whether to have a completely separate machine dedicated to this purpose.

Thanks in advance for the help.

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Cool_Fire
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Re: VMs & their host

Post by Cool_Fire » Wed Mar 04, 2015 3:35 am

Poochlookers wrote:Quick question about VMs
There seems to be more than one question, but I'll allow it. =p
Poochlookers wrote:When a VM accesses the internet through the host what information about the host is exposed\revealed ?
Normally it's either NAT'ed or given a virtual interface, which essentially makes the host machine the router/switch. This means something like tcpdump can view all packets. Encrypted traffic is still encrypted of course, but you can view destination addresses and ports at the very least. Also DNS requests are usually not encrypted.
Poochlookers wrote:vWhat if the VM accesses the internet through a network interface by itself ( a USB wifi adaptor) ?
The USB connection can also be sniffed, but it makes the process harder. Either way the physical network adapter assigned to the VM still needs to connect to a network so you'd really just be moving the problem from the VM host to the next network device.
Poochlookers wrote:What about a VPN connection on the VM itself ?
Usually a pretty good option for a full virtual machine. Not always an option on a container based VM.
Poochlookers wrote:What would be the best way to have a VM connect to the internet while exposing the host little as possible.
Same things that work well anywhere. TOR, tunnels, VPN, whatever you have available. TOR and ssh tunnels usually have the advantage of not requiring special privileges to be used. So even on container based VMs they should work fine.
Poochlookers wrote:I ask my questions because I am trying to decide whether to "explore and learn" from a VM hosted on a machine I use for personal matters or whether to have a completely separate machine dedicated to this purpose.
A VM should be fine. The precautions you should take don't really change much.
Poochlookers wrote:Thanks in advance for the help.
You're welcome.
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Poochlookers
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Joined: Thu Feb 05, 2015 10:02 pm

Re: VMs & their host

Post by Poochlookers » Wed Mar 04, 2015 11:51 pm

Thanks for the solid information, it is greatly apreciated,

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