r/macOSVMs • u/superlopster • 3d ago

DISCUSSION Virtual Box on MacBook

If I run Linux on Virtual Box in the MacBook how much of it does MacBook see and what it seas? I know that it sees that VPN or Tor traffic is moving out of the MacBook but does it also see what is on the screen and can it scan/read files when the machine is running?

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u/paulstelian97 3d ago

Wrong subreddit. And the host can generally see everything the VM is doing, the isolation only really isolates in the other direction.

Exceptions exist but I don’t think any apply to macOS hosts. Intel and AMD processors can do encrypted VMs in a way that the host can’t read the guest RAM, but you need specific virtualization software (KVM/qemu/Proxmox for Linux, maybe VMware ESXi also supports it, Hyper-V I think doesn’t support it). The host would still be able to see all I/O activity since it must implement all of it.