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!!