Hit a button by accident on an ad, Firefox crashed, then the kernel reported an issue.
Hit a button by accident on an ad, Firefox crashed, then the kernel reported an issue.
I was using Ubuntu in VirtualBox for a while. Firefox wasn’t up to date, and the installation files were outdated too. While browsing, I clicked an ad that caused Firefox to freeze and crash. Ubuntu reported a kernel error, which led to Firefox stopping completely. After about 20 seconds, the VM restarted, and I realized several things were outdated. I thought it might have been a memory overload or a bug, but the pattern of errors was too consistent to ignore. After around 30 seconds, I shut down the VM. I wasn’t sure if it was a real exploit or just a glitch, but given how systematically the system failed, I assumed it was possible for malware to breach VirtualBox. My host PC would have been much harder to compromise if it had escaped the VM. The NAT connection to my main PC via VPN added another layer, but I’m still a bit worried.
Typically it's not that simple for a bad program to just take over PCs on a network. It's extremely uncommon. Network infections generally require connecting a network drive or shares, which you don't appear to have done. I wouldn't be concerned about my host getting infected by something like this. Also, simply clicking an ad shouldn't lead to such issues. It likely ran out of memory. If it was malicious, it would have downloaded something and you'd need to handle that yourself. It's very unlikely a website will harm your host.