Mac – Why does antivirus on the host machine act up when VirtualBox is infected with a virus

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I'm testing vulnerability and severity of certain viruses on my Oracle VirtualBox (Windows XP) and virtual machines internet connection is set to NAT.

The issue is that my actual HOST PCs (Win10) antivirus (Bitdefender 2016) immediately acts when I'm trying to visit a certain website on my guest machine to get the virtual machine infected. It blocks access to websites immediately thus deleting files that are infected. I couldn't find any option that would turn off guarding my virtual machine either.

To me it is pretty unusual but at the same time, really impressive! It may prevent potential threats and harms that could break/sneak into my HOST machine and damage the files.

I still want to hear your opinion on this or if there is a way to isolate the virtual machine from the HOST machine so that the antivirus only guards HOST machine and totally ignores what's going on in guest OS.

Best Answer

I finally found a solution! Took me some time to ensure that it worked as intended. (Note that your antivirus may still keep records and logs and keep guarding your HOST OS)

  • Disable virtual machines firewall
  • Set VM OS network settings to NAT
  • Download and install TOR browser
  • Do not use internet explorer, chrome or firefox to download viruses or visit websites since they are pretty strong as they don't produce same level of damage. (They will indeed block access to many malicious websites)
  • Now your antivirus (Bitdefender 2016 in my case) will not block any website or participate in anything that virtual machine does. You are now free to infect your guest OS.

(If you don't own an antivirus/good antivirus, then your HOST PC may be in danger and you should probably not commit such action even in a virtual machine.)

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