Make A Virtual Machine Your Safe Internet-Browsing Sandbox
Browsing unknown Web sites puts your system at risk for malware infection. Using a virtual machine as a sandbox for safer browsing provides an additional layer of security for your machine.
by John Paul Cook
January 30, 2006
ecurity threats are an ever-present concern when using the Internet. Something as simple as browsing the Internet can introduce malware into a machine. Firewalls, antivirus, and antispyware software and good judgment must be exercised at all times. But no matter how well protected your system is and how careful you are, browsing unknown Web sites puts your system at risk. Consider the highly publicized Microsoft Graphics Rendering Engine Vulnerability. An unpatched system with this vulnerability is subject to being completely taken over by an attacker. Browsing an infected Web site can be enough for this vulnerability to be exploited. Using a virtual machine for Web browsing provides an excellent defense against this type of threat.
To understand how to use a virtual machine for safer browsing, first some terminology needs to be defined:
The physical machine on which the virtualization application (e.g., Virtual PC, Virtual Server, VMware, Xen) resides is the host machine, as in the machine that hosts the virtual machine.
A virtual machine is a guest machine.
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ecurity threats are an ever-present concern when using the Internet. Something as simple as browsing the Internet can introduce malware into a machine. Firewalls, antivirus, and antispyware software and good judgment must be exercised at all times. But no matter how well protected your system is and how careful you are, browsing unknown Web sites puts your system at risk. Consider the highly publicized 
