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I'm running Ubuntu 12.10 in VmWare Player, and my host machine is running Windows 7 x64. I was browsing the Web from within the virtual machine, and somehow the site I was visiting tried to infect my computer with malware. Luckily Avast antivirus detected the malware and blocked it. The funny thing is though that Avast is installed on the host machine, not the virtual one, yet it detected the malware.

Is this normal behavior? Does Avast monitor virtual machines as well as the host?

Can a website visited on the virtual machine infect the host machine? How do I prevent this from happening?

Thanks!!

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  • What details did Avast provide when it detected this malware?
    – jjlin
    Mar 28, 2013 at 4:30
  • I can't remember what exactly and I didn't write it down. Whatever it was was targeting an exe file on the host machine.
    – posfan12
    Apr 2, 2013 at 22:18
  • The only thing I can think of then is that your VM's browser is set to download files to a folder that is shared with the host machine, in which case a downloaded file will appear as just another file on the host machine.
    – jjlin
    Apr 3, 2013 at 3:38

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