Title sounds confusing and It might be wrong terminology, sorry about that. I have POP OS and windows in VM (virtualbox) for few apps that are not available on linux. Im trying to install one app that requires diferent activation method because it recognized Im running virtual machine. Is there any way to hide that so I can activate the app the way I usually do on non-VM windows?

I hope I was clear enough, cheers

Edit: typo

  • Skull giver@popplesburger.hilciferous.nlEnglish
    62·
    1 year ago

    Hiding virtualisation can be very easy or extremely difficult. It depends on what you’re trying to hide virtualisation from.

    If you’re trying to hide virtualisation from Windows or a random app that tries to be clever but crashes, renaming the VirtualBox devices should be more than enough. This may also work for some viruses if virus analysis is your sort of thing.

    If you’re trying to fool anticheat, you’re in for a world of hurt. There are tons of signs and weird behaviours that point out if a machine is a VM or not. You’ll need to patch a lot of hypervisor code to hide the basic hypervisor API, for example. You’ll also need to make sure the CPU architecture in your VM matches your host CPU exactly. You’ll need to patch the virtualised network cards and such to make them bug for bug compatible with the actual hardware, you can’t just rely on the spec like a normal programmer would.

    You could go the extreme route and virtualise the entire machine (BOCHS/PCem style) but you’ll probably be limited to Pentium III speeds if you do that, and performance monitoring will still be able to point out weird timing issues that indicate a VM.

    How hardcore you’ll need to go really depends on how the application detects that it’s running inside a VM. Try tools like these and see how far you’ll come, or follow the guides written by cheaters which aren’t always successful, but at least they’re exhaustive.