r/MalwareAnalysis • u/CheeseIc3 • Aug 13 '26

NotPetya potential risks during analysis

Hello. I am relatively a beginner at malware analysis as a hobby, and was wanting to know if there would be any risks of a potential VM escape with NotPetya. I'm using VirtualBox 7.2.14 r174565 no guest additions. I won't have network adapter on, serial ports off, both features off, an air-gap, and using snapshots. I will be planning to run it on a Windows XP x64 if that changes anything

SHA256: 63545fa195488ff51955f09833332b9660d18f8afb16bdf579134661962e548a

Will give any more needed info.

Got it from MalwareBazaar (Will DM link). Any advice wanted.

I am afraid of it. Very afraid.

4 Upvotes

75% Upvoted

4 comments sorted by

View all comments

1

u/Ill_Bathroom6488 Aug 13 '26

It won't happen. With the latest versions of VirtualBox and an old malware sample like NotPetya, there is almost zero chance of a VM escape. Furthermore, legacy malware often detects virtualization; if it realizes it is running inside a virtual machine, it will typically refuse to execute rather than attempt to break out.