[Gengar]

After losing my laptop to a huge virus blue screen and all, I have decided to take my projects to a Virtual Machine. I am using is called VirtualBox and I'm running the same OS on both the host and the VM (Windows 7 Ultimate). BUT since I'm new to VM's in general, I was hoping someone could enlighten me on how to use them for hacking/penetration testing, for example;

-Should I use the VPN on the host or the VM?
-Antivirus? How should I set that up?
-VM makes me safe from any RAT's, Keyloggers, and other viruses as long as I don't enter any personal information into the Guest OS right?

It's late at night so I was hoping to post this and then wake up to some juicy answers, but since I can't remember all the questions I have at the moment, if you could let me know if it's okay to PM you them in your post that would be great.

In the 2 days I have been a part of this forum I haven't really contributed anything so tomorrow I think I'll share a nice program I use to scan Google for sites vulnerable to SQL and XSS and as I become more trusted I will share some programs I have made on my own.

Thanks in advance!

[leku]

-Should I use the VPN on the host or the VM?
Depends on what you're planning to do, and how paranoid you are. If you're going to hack for example, just could just use other proxies.

-Antivirus? How should I set that up?
Like you usually do.

-VM makes me safe from any RAT's, Keyloggers, and other viruses as long as I don't enter any personal information into the Guest OS right?
The VM is in a sandbox. So if you get a virus in the VM, it won't infekt your normal operating system. If you're planning on doing debugging/disassemling, there are a FEW viruses, which notice when they're in a sandbox.

[timreed]

VMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM
100%

[xornull]

If you are totally concerned with your security and are very serious about this
then I know exactly what you need.

And yes~ you can run windows in it.
note you will need a seperate machine to install it as this operating system as it cannot run under VM's.
I did a little peek and I can say it's a bit tricky but if you are totally serious about this and want to be 99.9% secure
then this is what you need:

http://qubes-os.org/trac

This was developed by a very smart woman who specializes in low level security along with a bunch of other low level security guys,
It is open-source so you do not need to worry for backdoors, you will need about 4GB of RAM for it to actually work, I recommend 8GB or more.

Do some reading, understand how it works, read the documentation, because I didn't so therefore I am not sure if it will work for you.

Run a windows VM in it, use TrueCrypt full-drive encryption for the OS itself, and make a virtual volume for your projects inside with disabled networking, and then you can run a mini-VM for browsing so you may read online documentation for whatever.

I wouldn't suggest running an anti-virus on your windows VM because there is no networking, however if you simply enable networking temporarily so that the AV can update I suppose it could work but it could be a bit dangerous if there is already malware somehow in your windows VM.