Oracle announced the release of the version of your virtualization software "VirtualBox 6.1.6", which comes with 9 bug fixes. Also at the same time, fixes versions of VirtualBox 6.0.20 and 5.2.40 were released.
In the updates, 19 vulnerabilities were eliminated, of which 7 problems had a critical severity level (CVSS over 8). In particular, the vulnerabilities used in the attacks demonstrated in the Pwn2Own 2020 competition they were removed and allow access to the host system and code execution with the rights of a hypervisor through manipulations on the guest system side.
For those who are unfamiliar with VirtualBox, they should know that is a virtualization tool multi platform, which gives us the ability to create virtual disk drives where we can install an operating system within the one we normally use.
With this, we allows running virtual machines remotely, through Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP), iSCSI support. Another of the functions it presents is that of mount ISO images as virtual CD or DVD drives or as a floppy disk.
What's new in VirtualBox 6.1.6?
With the release of this new corrective version of VirtualBox 6.1.6, the improved Linux kernel support to components for host environments and plugins for guest systems, improved support for 2D and 3D acceleration, as well as rendering.
The Serial port driver error handling and the fixed freeze that occurs when the host port disappears and also improves the improved stability and performance of the USB subsystem.
It is also mentioned that issues with screen resizing have been resolved and processing multi-monitor setups appearing on guest systems with X11 and a VMSVGA virtual graphics adapter.
In VBoxManage it has been fixed with guest control operations and the API solved the problem of handling exceptions in folders for the Python language.
In the implementation of the subsystem to share the clipboard, errors were corrected and support for HTML data was added, in addition to that the user interface was improved and the visual elements were updated.
Finally if you want to know more about it About the details of this new corrective update, you can check them andn the following link.
How to install VirtualBox 6.1.6 on Ubuntu and derivatives?
This new version of virtualBox 6.1.6 is not available in the official Ubuntu package repository. But we can easily add VirtualBox package repository in Ubuntu and derivatives and install VirtualBox 6.1.6 from there.
Before installing VirtualBox, they need to ensure that hardware virtualization is enabled. If they are using an Intel processor, they must enable VT-x or VT-d from their computer's BIOS.
Installing from repository
To add the official VirtualBox package repository, they should open a terminal with Ctrl + Alt + T and run the following command:
echo "deb https://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian $(lsb_release -cs) contrib" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/virtualbox.list
Done this now We must add the public PGP key from the official VirtualBox packages repository to the system.
Otherwise, we will not be able to use the official VirtualBox package repository. To add the public PGP key from the official VirtualBox package repository, run the following command:
wget -q https://www.virtualbox.org/download/oracle_vbox_2016.asc -O- | sudo apt-key add -
Now that the official VirtualBox package repository is ready to use, we can install VirtualBox 6.1.6
First, we need to update the APT package repository with the following command:
sudo apt-get update
Once this is done, now we are going to proceed to install VirtualBox to the system with:
sudo apt install virtualbox-6.1
And ready with it, we can use the new version of VirtualBox in our system.
Installing from deb package
Another method with which we can install VirtualBox in Ubuntu or in some derivative, is by downloading the deb package corresponding to the version of Ubuntu you have. The deb package can be obtained from the official VirtualBox website.
For example for Ubuntu 19.10:
wget https://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/6.1.6/virtualbox-6.1_6.1.6-137129~Ubuntu~eoan_amd64.deb
Or for Ubuntu 18.04 LTS:
wget https://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/6.1.6/virtualbox-6.1_6.1.6-137129~Ubuntu~bionic_amd64.deb
In case of still being on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, the package that you occupy is this:
wget https://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/6.1.6/virtualbox-6.1_6.1.6-137129~Ubuntu~xenial_amd64.deb
Finally, you can install the downloaded package with your preferred package manager or from the terminal by executing the following command:
sudo dpkg -i virtualbox*.deb