I have used both products, and the bottom line is that Sun VirtualBox is a little rough around the edges. While it loads faster, sound capability is lacking. It has a much simpler interface, but at the same time the interface is a little cryptic. It does, however, load virtual disks from VMware Workstation.

To add virtual machines (VMs) to VirtualBox you must first create or add an existing virtual disk to the virtual disk manager. VirtualBox understands VMDKs from VMware Workstation 6.5 as well as those exported using VMware Converter from VMware ESX hosts. Once you have the virtual disk you can then create the VM and launch the VM.

I used Sun VirtualBox to work around the limitations within VMware Workstation’s USB support. Sun VirtualBox’s implementation of USB is much better and supported the device I need to use: LiveScribe SmartPen. When the SmartPen first came out there was no support for 64-bit Vista implementations, so I had to resort to virtual machines to get the 32-bit drivers to work, but they would not work through VMware Workstation on any version. They did work through VirtualBox. So VirtualBox allowed me to save my notes, but since there was no sound, I could not play them back. Eventually, 64-bit Vista drivers came out, all was well and I removed my VirtualBox implementation.

VirtualBox a good simple product if all you need is a spare system to run USB devices that VMware Workstation doesn’t support. If VirtualBox was given sound support it could rival VMware Workstation. Even so it is a very good tool to include in your virtualization toolbox. Simply put, however, VirtualBox is not as robust as VMware.

VMware Workstation provides many more features than the bare bones Sun VirtualBox. These features include embedded video creation, debugging modes for kernel developers, high speed inter-VM communication via VMCI, solid sound and video support, VM teaming, etc. If you need more than a bare bones, no thrills product then VMware Workstation is for you.

The issue occurs when you pass long usernames or passwords into VMware-Authd which will cause the application to crash. While it is restarted, a DoS attack could occur which would keep crashing the application and possibly filling up disk space with crash files as well.

VMware has been very responsive to this vulnerability and a fix is already completed. Check out this VMware thread for some more details. This type of response is quite commendable.

Milw0rm is a great resource for exploits of any kind, but since it is used by hackers it is best to access this site from a system you do not mind rebuilding occasionally; a VM works as does using The Onion Ring (TOR) plug-in for Firefox and Internet Explorer. It is best to be overly cautious when browsing sites that hackers create and visit, though they often have the latest exploits and attacks available.

Another good site is prometric.com, which hosts the 100 top hacker sites. As always be cautious when accessing any of these sites.

A hearty “good job” to VMware for their response to this and all other security issues!