Could a virus leak from virtualbox into my real OS?

Are you on the internet with that machine?

It is possible for the virus on a dual boot or virtual machine to cross over.

I won’t say it’s impossible, but I’ve installed malware on my VirtualBox many times with no effect to the main OS. Also, the snapshot restore feature allows you to “uninstall” any viruses on the virtual OS since you last took a snapshot.

@Tropical_Willie I put XP on virtualbox to test potentially infected torrents

@Vortico So the tipical torrent containing a virus should be good?

I don’t think so, but if it does, it’s one hell of a virus.

If your virtual OS is Windows, go ahead for double protection and use Sandboxie. Then the FBI couldn’t even design software to get to the main OS with that setup.

It depends on whether the malware is a worm type that has programming to compromise LAN-type networks from the inside. Imagine your virtualbox sitting on your lan. Is your firewall on your host-OS configured well, and strong? Will the worm bypass it? It is possible yes, but you can protect yourself from it. Using a decent firewall and an intrusion detection system (IDS), as well as packet sniffing (see what the virtuabox does). Sandboxie is a good suggestion, but if you’re still paranoid (like me) you can also do the above.

I have sandboxie, so I should just run vb sandboxed?

I would install Sandboxie on the virtual OS so you don’t have to create disk image copies everywhere.