Discuss the 4.3.14 release

[DellAnderson]

@DellAnderson: I don't know how old the stuff you were reading was, but there is no longer a "commercial version" of VirtualBox....

Yes, I think I may have been misreading the FAQ at virtualbox . org / wiki / Licensing_FAQ. It sounds like the 'dual licensing' is more of a service agreement, although the extension pack is not GPL and therefore a different subject. By the way, I want to make clear that I am very grateful for the massive amount of intelligence and effort that goes into open source software development. Not having had the good fortune to have the proper education or financial resources to be involved from the beginning, I'm peddling as fast as I can to catch up and be able to make my own contributions to Open Source. But no matter the pay or lack thereof, I believe in doing the best I can at what I do.

And thanks for the excellent "HowTo: Move a VM". My previous post was not clear, but my old installation of Virtual Box was actually removed a long ago and the reason I don't have room to reinstall on the primary hard drive now has nothing to do with Virtual Box. I will be starting from scratch (In fact, on a completely different computer that has never had a Virtual Box installation). So this will be not so much a move as a 'new install an USB drive'. Because the host will be Windows 7 Pro 64 bit which is rumored to have issues with 4.3.14 release, I arrived at this thread.

Cloning an existing Windows OS deserves a thread of its own. Perhaps you can start one asking about that.

Thanks...I will definitely do that when I have settled on a Linux host distro that resonates with me best, but at the moment my goal for virtual box is to simply to test out multiple flavors of Linux to help make that decision and to participate in the Edx course mentioned previously.

My suggestion is to use 4.3.12 for now, or if you prefer more stable versions, use the latest 4.2 version.

Thanks! I've downloaded it, checked the MD5 sums and will post in a new thread if I have any issues. Thanks to mpack for his tolerance of this related but somewhat tangential discussion topic.

[FurqanHanif]

i Won't be able to Install Windows XP...

2014-08-10_212658.png (19.18 KiB) Viewed 7525 times

[mpack]

@Furqan: I assume you're on a Windows host, in which case you should try the 4.3.15 build discussed here.

[rfried]

Can't connect to anything while network is on NAT. Bridged network does work, but isn't an option in our corporate network.
Host OS: Windows 7 Enterprise x64

I confirm this Bug for 4.3.14!
Also the maintenance relase 4.2.26 has the sam Bug!

Workaround: Downgrade to 4.3.12 (4.2.24)

[VickersNick]

Perryg wrote: "As of version 4.3.14, VirtualBox for Windows has hardened security to eliminate a possible exploit that could allow malicious user/s to have access to your system."

Does this indicate that an attacker could:
a) use virtualbox to access/control/escalate privileges on the host
b) break out of a VM and access the host system
c) break into a VM from the host system
d) all of the above
e) none of the above

[mpack]

Does this indicate that an attacker could:
...
b) break out of a VM and access the host system
...

Hardening has nothing to do with the VM. It's about "foreign" applications in Windows hosts injecting DLLs into the VirtualBox executable address space running on the host. Such code could potentially run at the same privilege level as VBox itself.

Processes running in the guest OS can't access the host except via an official VirtualBox API, which obviously won't let it do anything dangerous (that's assuming you don't do anything totally nutty, like enabling drag and drop, or copying your bank details into a shared folder).

[VickersNick]

Hardening has nothing to do with the VM. It's about "foreign" applications in Windows hosts injecting DLLs into the VirtualBox executable address space running on the host. Such code could potentially run at the same privilege level as VBox itself.

Okay thanks. That makes me feel a little better.

Processes running in the guest OS can't access the host except via an official VirtualBox API, which obviously won't let it do anything dangerous (that's assuming you don't do anything totally nutty, like enabling drag and drop, or copying your bank details into a shared folder).

Did a little digging into VM Escape and found a recent article relating to VirtualBox's 3D acceleration for OpenGL graphics.

http://www.vupen.com/blog/20140725.Adva ... Escape.php

A lot of that stuff goes way over my head but it seems like they are not relying on user nuttiness.

[mpack]

That article seems to be talking about exploits - i.e. the ability to make the application crash. In theory you could build malware to take advantage... but it aint gonna happen. Too specialised, typical security scare crapola. OTOH (Windows) host malware which targets everything, not especially VirtualBox, is much more likely proposition and is what the hardening mods are all about.

[madwolfa]

3D acceleration stopped working in 4.3.14 with latest NVIDIA drivers (340.52). Any idea about it?

[wbedard]

VirtualBox Support Staff,

As a dedicated member of your QA staff <grin>, I will describe the problem that I have experienced since the 4.3.14 release. Since there is also the very active thread regarding the problem with Anti-Virus solutions, I would like your input on which thread to place the bulk of the discussion. First of all, my "vitals":

Host: Win 7 Pro (64-bit), fully patched
Host Anti-Virus Solution: Comodo ISP (7.0.317799.4142)
Guest: pfsense 2.2 (based on FreeBSD 10)
Relevant Hardware: Alfa USB WiFi NIC

Problem Summary: I am using VB as a testing environment to beta-test pfsense 2.2, a popular network router software solution. As such, I configure VirtualBox with a host-based network which becomes a LAN interface in the pfsense VM. I also connect the Alfa USB WiFi NIC to the host and attach it to the VM which becomes a WiFi interface. I use a standard VB bridge adapter for the WAN interface in the pfsense VM. Up to VB 4.3.12, this setup has been running great. Starting with VB 4.3.14, I started having problems.

Additional Details: It became obvious that the initial problems I experienced (couldn't even start the VM) were due to the conflicts with my AV solution. Once the later 4.3.15 testing builds came out, I could at least start the VM normally, including connecting up all the interfaces. However, within around 1 minute of starting the VM, once traffic started moving around (more detailed testing still needed here...), the USB WLAN device in the VM would disconnect (more detail including specific errors, screenshots, debug logs, etc available upon request...). This problem continues to exist with the VB 4.3.16 release, though I have not tested it using any of the 4.3.17 testing builds.

Bottom Line: Does this sound like a potential problem with my AV solution or simply another aspect of the changes made starting in VB 4.3.14? I have reproduced the problem after "disabling" all aspects of my AV solution, though I have not resorted to uninstalling it and testing in that environment. Regardless of which thread you feel this problem report belongs in, I am fully prepared to provide whatever diagnostic materials might help your devs understand what is causing it. Thanks in advance!

R/
wbedard

[socratis]

Have you tried the 4.3.16 release? There's even a 4.3.17 beta build for you to try. Please check "Windows 4.3.16 specifically for errors due to security".

[Perryg]

Please read and post in this thread. viewtopic.php?f=6&t=63556

I would try the test version asap though.

[signsanssignified]

I'm running into the same problem.

Host OS: Ubuntu 14.04
Guest OS: 'Ubuntu_64'
VirtualBox: 5.0.16 r105871
Vagrant: 1.7.4

Attempting to start up VirtualBox & vagrant this morning via 'vagrant up', I got the following error message:

Code: Select all

Command: ["hostonlyif", "create"]

Stderr: 0%...
Progress state: NS_ERROR_FAILURE
VBoxManage: error: Failed to create the host-only adapter
VBoxManage: error: VBoxNetAdpCtl: Error while adding new interface: failed to open /dev/vboxnetctl: No such file or directory
VBoxManage: error: Details: code NS_ERROR_FAILURE (0x80004005), component HostNetworkInterfaceWrap, interface IHostNetworkInterface
VBoxManage: error: Context: "RTEXITCODE handleCreate(HandlerArg*)" at line 71 of file VBoxManageHostonly.cpp

I see a lot of posts dealing with Windows 10; am I the only one having a problem with Ubuntu 14.04?

[Perryg]

Sorry but we don't support vagrant. They change too many things and use special scripts that are unknown to us making it too time consuming to diagnose.

vagrant support

[socratis]

Shouldn't this thread be locked in any event? Besides the fact that the user posted in the "4.3.14 release" while having 5.0.16, the thread has been dead for a long time. We're up to 4.3.36...