Generically Determining the Prescence of Virtual Machines

[valsmith@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

At OffensiveComputing we were looking at ways to detect virtual machines and 
had found and discarded many unsophisticated methods such as looking for VMWare 
Tools running as a service or VMWare related registy keys, etc. Then we 
discovered Joanna Rutkowska's very interesting "Redpill" method. This was an 
eye opening work for us. After spending a little time playing with it we 
realized it wasn't fool proof on multiprocessor systems and so we decided to 
research the problems and possible ways to improve on the method. We discovered 
and implemented an improved method which is presented in the this paper.

http://www.offensivecomputing.net/papers/vm.pdf

thanks, 

V.