If you are running a Virtual Machine on VMWare or Virtualbox, whose MAC Address is visible to Internet;.i.e. of the Host OS or of the Virtual OS and why?
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In the case of IPv4 the MAC address is not visible to the internet at large since it is only part of the local physical transport. I.e. only up to the next router. Although it may be visible to neighboring nodes (colocated servers or neighbors on some cable networks) and the service provider itself if there is no intermediate router separating the networks at the data link layer level.
In the case of IPv6 it depends on how the machine gets its address, some forms of autoconfiguration may include the MAC address as the lower 64bits in the address, others don't. And the v6 privacy extensions complicate this further. But if the MAC is embedded in the v6 address then it is globally visible and could be easily tracked as the lower 64bits would remain the same even if the prefix changes.
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Edit: As andrew-medico mentioned, the question should be asked at SuperUser.
According to an answer by harrymc on SuperUser, the MAC address visible to the Ethernet will be the one of the virtual OS, if you are running it in bridged network mode.
the virtual driver just injects packages with its own virtual MAC address and responds to packages that are destined to that MAC address, even though physically no such adapter exists.
Please note the difference between Ethernet and internet. The internet will only know your IP, not your MAC address.
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1Don't answer off topic questions. Just flag to close. – nobody Dec 06 '16 at 14:20
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Ok, you're right. When I have the rep to do that, I'll flag. – lorenz Dec 06 '16 at 14:35