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VirtualBox: 5 ways it is useful
- Penetration Testing:
Penetration testing and training on OS’s such as Kali Linux and Parrot Security are best done in the safety of a controlled VM environment. There are multiple reasons for this, the most urgent being the legality issues faced with using such software against a foreign network. For safeties sake, the best practice is to create a pentesting VM, such as Kali or Parrot, and create a few other VM’s in other OS’s, such as a Linux distribution or a Windows. You can even load Android OS’s on there, since they are a version of Linux. Then you can safely penetration test against the other OS’s without facing legal consequence.
- (^) Try before you buy:
Looking to upgrade to a new OS, but not sure which one? VM’s are great for this purpose. The hassle of creating dual boot system or entirely wiping out your old OS to simply try a new one can consume hours of time. Trust me, I know from experience. With a VM in place you can install a new OS without having to worry about messing up your current one, or having to re-install the old one because you found out the grass was not greener. This ability can save someone countless hours, and severe frustration, while letting them get use to a new environment.
- Barrier:
If, while browsing the internet, you were unlucky enough to be infected with some malicious code, your system is now compromised. Hopefully some sort of anti-virus caught it, if not then you could be in trouble. However, if you run an OS in a VM the damage is contained inside the VM, which is not an issue because you can easily create another instance of a VM if needed, or you can revert to a saved spot in your OS. This ability is great because you no longer must worry about infecting your own system.
- Money Saver:
Using VM’s can also be a huge money saver. Let’s say that you need to create a complex network for either testing purposes or for an educational reason. Using VM’s will let you do that easily by giving you the ability to create servers, regular computer OS’s like Windows or Linux, Android OS’s, basically anything you may need or wants. And it does all this with you having to spend a considerable sum of money of the devices by letting you install multiple VM’s on different machines. If your machine has the ability, you can have many instances of a VM running on it.
- More Freedom:
I think the biggest perk of using VM’s is that it gives you the freedom to explore other OS’s and take advantage of other programs that you normally couldn’t. For example, if a MAC user wanted to dip their toes into the open-source world of Linux, a VM is great.
It lets the user have access to resources that are free, such as their version of Office, rather than paying for the feature through Microsoft. If a user wants to test out a new Android OS before they buy it, they can. Using a VM just gives the user the ability to do more things overall than being tied down to one VM on a machine.
References: https://blogs.vmware.com/vmtn/2007/08/top-10-things-y.html http://www.lifehack.org/articles/technology/7-uses-for-a-virtual-machine.html https://www.linux.com/learn/why-when-and-how-use-virtual-machine
www.pcworld.com/article/220644/10_Cool_Things_Virtualization_Lets_You_Do.html
