I may have found a bug in VBox. While I had 64-bit Windows 8 Pro running in
a VM, I was testing out desktop features in the OS and making adjustments to
its settings when I came across a setting for changing the logon account
picture and noticed that it appeared to be functional. This seemed odd to me
that the VM's guest would have access to the host's camera, which is a web
camera built in to the top edge of a PC monitor for a laptop. To my way of
thinking this is comparable to a USB device and should have to be enabled on
the VB Control Panel if it would be accessible. Is that not right?
Naturally, I wanted to see if it could be accessed so I "flipped the switch"
and sure enough the little blue light indicator illuminated. Unfortunately,
this procedure then locked up the guest OS, quite so. Nothing functioned
inside the VM at that point, not even the VBox menu controls, and it was
necessary to use Windows Task Manager to shut down the processes, and even
one of them would not budge. I ended up having to reboot to clear the
process from memory. After doing so, I tested the camera to see how it was
doing, but not too well. It was way out of whack on the settings I had put
into it, and it was necessary to reinstall the drivers as well. I finally
got it working properly again.
I am not eager to retest this procedure anytime soon, but I do think this is
an indication of a problem that is due attention. If my environment can be
broken in this way, then that of others could be too. I think there is a
security consideration as well, in relation to the possibility of the host's
camera getting manipulated and becoming accessible to the VM. The only
bright side of this whole episode is that it caused me to learn about how to
keep the camera imaging in an off state until I want to use it without
having to unload the program from memory or uninstalling it altogether. So I
learned a little something more about this particular system's security
features. I surely would not any rogue code snapping my picture suddenly.
John A. Wallace
The pen is mightier than the sword, but only if you get in the first stroke.
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