Privacy

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Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

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Extension Pack in VirtualBox, is there a privacy risk? (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

13 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Hello, I try to keep my Debian laptop as private as possible, but for work, I need to use Windows software, so I run a VirtualBox with Windows 11. My PC runs smoothly without any issues, but I need to access my specific hardware USB ports, and it doesn't recognize them. I read that I need to install the Extension Pack, so I downloaded it, but before installing it, I get a warning message that seems to suggest I'm accepting some risk to my computer. I don't really understand this stuff, so I wanted to ask the following:

Is there any security or privacy risk associated with the VirtualBox Extension Pack?

Is there any other way to access my USB-C devices without installing it? (I've already tried selecting USB 2.0 and 3.0, but the list shows "no device available").

Thank you very much to whoever responds.

PS: Also I found this on the Internet: "The user agreement VirtualBox extension pack states of sharing a user’s data to the US govt. including the hardware information and so on. Does it make sense even if I use Tails/Whonix for anonymity?" :-/

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago (2 children)

No USB passthrough in VirtualBox without the extension pack. And unless you have a paid version it is a license violation to use the extension pack in a commercial setting. Take that with a grain of salt: it's from the top of my head and it has been a while (years) since I touched VirtualBox. Since you are concerned about privacy, I'd suggest not touching closed proprietary software, like VirtualBox, at all whenever possible. Luckily, for virtualization in linux, that is perfectly possible. What you will want to look at is kvm/qemu. And maybe a handy UI to that like (qt-) virt-manager or gnome Boxes.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Virtualbox is libre. However, virt-manager is still better

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

The extension pack isn't though: it's closed source and only free for evaluation, personal use, and educational purposes.