VMWare Fusion and Bridged Networking?

[jmFightSpam]

Hi,

I am running VMWare Fusion on OS X Leopard (10.5.2) -- i.e. that is the host
I have Windows Vista 32-bit pre-SP1 running as a VM - i.e. that is the guest

Initially, I just used the default NAT networking option. However, I needed the guest to be able to access some shared drives on another Windows machine on my home network, along with the printer. So I set the networking option to bridged.

When I logged back into the guest after rebooting, I saw that I had two different networks:

A Home Network (Private)
An Unidentified Network (Public)

What is this Unidentified Network and why is it public? What does it do that the Home Network doesn't do?
Is this causing a security risk?

Thanks.

 

[gwerhart0800]

My disclaimer: I have been a long time user of other VMWare products for Windows & Linux environments and I only recently added a Mac & VMWare Fusion to my collection of stuff.

Basically, the "bridged" network option sets the network card into promiscuous mode. It then sets up the network card to represent itself as two IP addresses ... your host Mac and the VMWare machine. The "security" issue is really an issue of securing each operating system. When you were running the VM behind a NAT, the security of the host was the most significant factor. When you run as "bridged", each OS is independent as far as network access is concerned, so you will need to firewall the Vista just as if you were running it on its own system. To my knowledge, there is no way for a hacker who compromises a guest OS to modify the host OS. But, the other way is definitely an issue.

Hope this helps ...