VirtualBox continuously increases host RAM usage until it depletes it

[Peter Djalaliev]

Hello,

I have VirtualBox 7.0.14_Debian r161095 on a Kali Linux host with a Windows 11 guest VM. The VM image is the official one for VirtualBox downloaded from Microsoft.

I have configured the Windows 11 VM with 3 GB or RAM. When I start the VM, VirtualBox on the host consume around 3.6 GB RAM - all good. From then on, VirtualBox's host RAM usage slowly increases until it depletes all the host's RAM. When that happends, Kali Linux likely kills VirtualBox and the RAM is released. If I monitor the host RAM usage and shut down the VM before it reaches 100%, the consumed RAM is also released.

I tried installing all available updates both on the Kali Linux host and the Windows 11 guest VM.