Can you tell if the machine on which you are running is a virtual machine installed secretly by some malware/hacker?

Somebody asked me: can you tell if the machine on which you are running is a virtual machine installed secretly by some malware/hacker?




I thought about that question and the answer is SURE. Without any doubt.
A virtual machine will consume some resources by itself (quite a lot). If you observe these missing resources you can figure out that something is wrong.





Method 1 - Graphics

You don't even need to start a program to accurately measure the missing resources.
You can tell if the machine in which you are running is a virtual machine or not, simply by running a game.
Most virtual machines have problems with accelerated graphics. Simply put, you cannot play resource-intensive 3D games in a virtual machine.



Method 2 - RAM

Now to tell exactly if you are running in a virtual machine, you don't need advanced hacker tools. Simply press Ctrl+Shift+Esc to start TaskManager. Under "Physical Memory (MB)" and watch the 'Total' field. In my case is shows 32GB which is indeed the amount I have physically installed. This number can be also seen in the Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\System (Win+Break key).


Method 2 - CPU

Another method is to run a tool like (Hardware ID Extractor) that gives you the theoretic speed of the CPU and the real (measured) speed of the CPU. If real speed of the CPU is smaller than the theoretic speed, then something is fishy.

Also the CPU ID might give info about this. I will investigate it.



Remember: also collaborate the data shown by software with writes on your actual CPU/RAM.