VMware touts the updates to their newest beta release of VMware Fusion to be: More Seamless, Safer, More Mac-friendly, with More Tech-Pro Tools. Now is it safer, or did it cross the lines of “The Rules of Virtualization”.
Similar to the rules of robotics:
1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law. (source)
Virtualization started out with these 3 implied rules, which where fully supported across the board until recently:
1. A virtual machine should not be aware that it is running inside a virtual machine.
2. A virtual machine should not be able to affect another virtual machine on the same host.
3. A virtual machine should not have direct access to files on the host computer.
Here are the features which I’m concerned about in VMware Fusion and Parallels Desktop.
VMware Fusion 2 Beta 2
Sharing is Caring—Application Sharing Between Windows and Mac
VMware Fusion Application Sharing lets you have the best of both worlds by setting your favorite application—whether Windows or Mac—to run any file.
Set Windows applications to launch specific file types in your Mac’s shared folders or directly launch Mac applications from inside your virtual machine. You can even set Windows or Mac applications to handle all web, email, and other links by default.
Response: Great, now you can download a windows virus, trojan or malware and it will launch it automatically inside of the windows virtual machine. If the software was designed to run in a stealth mode you may never know it is executing in the background.
Mirror, Mirror, on my Mac—Special Folders Mirroring
Access all your Mac files, straight from any Windows application. VMware Fusion’s Mirrored Folders easily maps special folders on your Mac to their counterparts in your virtual machine.
Enable Mirrored Folders, and contents of your Mac “Pictures,” “Documents,” “Music,” and “Desktop” folders automatically show up in your Windows virtual machine as the Windows “My Pictures,” “My Document,” “My Music,” and “Desktop” folders.
Save a file from a Windows application to “My Documents” and it saves to your Mac Documents folder. Browse to “My Music” in your Windows virtual machine and see the contents of your Mac’s “Music” folder.
Take full advantage of everything the Mac’s file system has to offer, like Spotlight searching, automatic backup with Time Machine and more, while enjoying the full power of your Windows applications.
Response: Awesome, now a quick virus can take out not only the documents inside of your virtual machine, but ALL of your important documents. Let’s hope you are running Time Machine on a regular basis. This violates the 3rd rule of virtualization, files outside the virtual machine should be 100% safe from any action inside of the virtual machine.
Run Windows applications like they were native to your Mac! Enjoy both operating systems, without managing two desktops.
The first to bring you this innovative technology, Parallels Desktop 3.0 now goes even further to deepen OS integration and create a seamless user environment.
Response: As people are becoming more lacks on the use of Anti Virus software inside of virtualization, with even some professionals saying that anti virus software is overkill inside a virtual machine, allowing applications to escape the confines of the operating system window has some strange problems. Consider this, Now you can crash the virtual machine and the host if you ended browsing to a website with a javascript popup window loop. Just imagine trying to shutdown 25 popup windows in OSX, which are actually Internet Explorer windows?
Smart Select
Parallels Desktop 3.0 for Mac’s new SmartSelect™, available from Parallels, enables Mac users to open any Windows or Mac file with whichever software they choose - regardless of its original OS! Now you can open Windows files with any Mac software and Mac files with any Windows software.
With support in both Windows and Mac OS X and deep document, email, and web-browser integration between the two operating systems, Parallels Desktop 3.0’s SmartSelect™ frees you to choose the best software for the job, without interrupting your workflow.
Previously, Parallels Desktop users had to copy a file into either Windows or Mac OS X to open the file with the application they wanted. Now, in Parallels Desktop 3.0, you can open any file from either OS and view it with the software of your choice.
Response: Click on an EXE, nothing happens, Click is Again, Nothing Happens.. Click it one more time.. now you have 3 copies of the virus running inside of your virtual machine, without you even realizing that anything happened. Chances are your antivirus software, if you have any, on the mac will not detect a exe virus and prevent it from running inside a virtual machine.
As long as all these features can be enabled/disabled I don’t see any problems. Preferrably they should be disabled by default and leave it to the user to decide to enable them or not.
1- Application Sharing: “Great, now you can download a windows virus, trojan or malware and it will launch it automatically inside of the windows virtual machine.”
You should prevent downloading malware in the first place to your Mac.Your VM should also be running Malware protection. Where is the difference if you get the malware to the VM directly from the internet or from the internet via your mac?
“Special Folders Mirroring” - Response: Awesome, now a quick virus can take out not only the documents inside of your virtual machine, but ALL of your important documents.
Loss of important documents is always a risk, if your only protection is “I’m running OS X and I’m safe” than you shouldn’t be running a Windows VM in the first place. Backups are a good recovery control, no matter which OS you are running.
“You should prevent downloading malware in the first place to your Mac.Your VM should also be running Malware protection. Where is the difference if you get the malware to the VM directly from the internet or from the internet via your mac?”
My theory, untested, is that some of the protection provided by windows for files downloaded from the internet will be bypassed by executing exe files with these new features. Running malware protection, anti-virus and anti-spyware all will prevent these issues.
One other question to ask is… “will my mac’s antivirus software even recognize a windows virus?” a lot of AV software only looks for viruses that can actually effect the machine, they don’t even know about the other’s viruses
[…] Concerns Over VMware Fusion 2.0 Beta 2 and Parallels Desktop: VMware touts the updates to their newest beta release of VMware Fusion to be: More Seamless, Safer, More Mac-friendly, with More Tech-Pro Tools. Now is it safer, or did it cross the lines of “The Rules of Virtualization”. […]
[…] and guest operating systems on which the virtualization solution is running” pose a problem? This issue was addressed in an article that was based on the author’s “3 Rules of Virtualization.” However according […]
August 5th, 2008 at 9:57 am
As long as all these features can be enabled/disabled I don’t see any problems. Preferrably they should be disabled by default and leave it to the user to decide to enable them or not.
1- Application Sharing: “Great, now you can download a windows virus, trojan or malware and it will launch it automatically inside of the windows virtual machine.”
You should prevent downloading malware in the first place to your Mac.Your VM should also be running Malware protection. Where is the difference if you get the malware to the VM directly from the internet or from the internet via your mac?
“Special Folders Mirroring” - Response: Awesome, now a quick virus can take out not only the documents inside of your virtual machine, but ALL of your important documents.
Loss of important documents is always a risk, if your only protection is “I’m running OS X and I’m safe” than you shouldn’t be running a Windows VM in the first place. Backups are a good recovery control, no matter which OS you are running.
August 5th, 2008 at 2:49 pm
“You should prevent downloading malware in the first place to your Mac.Your VM should also be running Malware protection. Where is the difference if you get the malware to the VM directly from the internet or from the internet via your mac?”
My theory, untested, is that some of the protection provided by windows for files downloaded from the internet will be bypassed by executing exe files with these new features. Running malware protection, anti-virus and anti-spyware all will prevent these issues.
Brad
August 24th, 2008 at 2:28 am
One other question to ask is… “will my mac’s antivirus software even recognize a windows virus?” a lot of AV software only looks for viruses that can actually effect the machine, they don’t even know about the other’s viruses
September 10th, 2008 at 6:00 pm
[…] Concerns Over VMware Fusion 2.0 Beta 2 and Parallels Desktop: VMware touts the updates to their newest beta release of VMware Fusion to be: More Seamless, Safer, More Mac-friendly, with More Tech-Pro Tools. Now is it safer, or did it cross the lines of “The Rules of Virtualization”. […]
September 12th, 2008 at 8:14 pm
[…] and guest operating systems on which the virtualization solution is running” pose a problem? This issue was addressed in an article that was based on the author’s “3 Rules of Virtualization.” However according […]