Hi everyone! I’m kinda new to VMs, so sorry for the basic questions. I just spent the entire day trying (and failing) to get pfSense running on my M1 MacBook Air, only to finally learn that it's not compatible with Apple Silicon 😅

I’ve been following the book Ethical Hacking: A Hands-On Introduction to Breaking In by Daniel G. Graham, which uses VirtualBox to set up a lab environment. In one of the early chapters, it walks you through setting up pfSense as a firewall to protect your VMs when they're connected to the internet.

My main questions are:

• Is there a workaround to using pfSense on M1?

• Can I still keep my virtual environment safe without pfSense while doing attacks and tests?

• Should I stick with VirtualBox, or just switch to VMware Fusion, which I heard works better with M1?

Thanks for the help.