How to detect if my application is running in a virtual machine?

Question

How can I detect (.NET or Win32) if my application is running in a virtual machine?

Answer 1

For Lower level Tests I recommend looking at ScoopyNG [1]. It is a collection of known low-level, well working vm detection methods, albeit being a little dated.

If you really want to rely on other things, like installed tools (VM* Additions) , these are much easier to "fake".

This [2] Blog Post also has a pretty nice overview, from low level asm stuff, checking for specific DLLs, filepaths and registry keys to check.

[1] http://trapkit.de/research/vmm/scoopyng/index.html

[2] http://securitykitten.github.io/vm-checking-and-detecting/