The security of the internet is based on random numbers, and everyone relies on it. But I have a screenshot I took, that makes me wonder how secure a virtual system could be. Have a look at the screenshot and decide for yourself:

You may be wondering why Solitaire is a security glitch? Well look at the two vitural machines, they are both running solitaire, one is Windows 3.1 and the other is Windows XP Pro. I opened up each of the solitaire windows to visual compare the difference between the operating systems when I notice something. The order of the card deals was IDENTICAL. And I realized that the security glitch is as follows, all virtual machines use the same CPU so that means it could lead to security issues. I haven’t figured out what the security glitch might be, just thought I needed to post the screenshot.

What else comes to mind is this, is virtual machines emulated hardware identical? So can an operating system running on a virtual machine tell if you change it onto a different computer? Here is why I’m wondering. If you build a virtual hard drive with Windows XP. Shutdown the system, duplicate the drive and create a virtual machine and boot will it notice? So is so what does it notice? What it keeping it from being installed once and then duplicated to make maybe 10 virtual machines or maybe 100? It looks like there is going to be a huge potential for a preconfigured virtual machine downloads from pirated sites. What microsoft needs to do is create a required virtual machine as a licensing server. Doesn’t have to be a full virtual system, could just be a just a small network tool. But basically allow there to be some volume licensing control panel, so a complete key list could be entered into the host system, and distributed during installation.

With normal licensing it is very easy to count: 5 computers = 5 copies of 2k3 server. Virtual machines is a huge fuzzy area. Recently the vista EULA has been reviewed and commented on in regards to the 1 machine 1 install limitation, banning home virtualization. It makes MSDN Subscription look even more tempting to be able to test out parallels on the highly anticipated intel core 2 duo mac mini. But really once you get dynamic virtual machines which can be halted, hidden, duplicated and destroyed all with a few clicks how will it be possible to keep track of the number of licenses needed to be legal?

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