Can malware be able to get out of your virtual machine?

If malware escapes from a virtual machine, it will instantly do severe damage to your PC. While there is no guarantee that virtual machines will prevent malware from escaping the sandbox, since virtualization provides isolation and protection, the chances of malware stepping out of VMs are extremely rare.

However, there have been instances where worms or malware have managed to escape virtual machines.

Nowadays, malware can detect virtual machines by checking the network connection and presence of virtualization by pinging the sites and checking their responses.?

When malware finds itself operating within a virtual setup, it won't decrypt and install payloads, making it difficult for malware analysts to investigate it.

However, in certain instances, malware can discover vulnerabilities in the virtual machine and attempt to access the host system if the virtual machine is not set up properly. Although you took care of properly setting up your virtual machine, one careless mistake could open up a route for malware to spread.

And the worst case is a zero-day vulnerability in the VM itself, which is impossible to prevent.

Some best practices to evaluate safety before analyzing malware in the virtual environment :

1. It depends on the type of malware. It should be safe as long as you're looking at outdated malware. Make sure that the virtual machine is isolated enough from the host computer and has the latest antivirus program installed before analyzing.
2. Disable the features, such as shared files or clipboard features, in the virtual machine.
3. Being aware that malware can scan network traffic from within the VM, thus preventing the possibility by setting the virtual machine network mode to host-only adapter in the event of dynamic analysis. If not, disable network access completely.
4. If you still feel somewhat insecure, to avoid that paranoia, turn on VPN on the host machine.