Re: [PATCH 1/2] VMware detection support for x86 and x86-64

Alok Kataria
2008-09-25T04:46:30Z

On Wed, 2008-09-24 at 21:38 -0700, H. Peter Anvin wrote:
> Alok kataria wrote:
> >
> > Even if there is anything on that port on native hardware it would
> > work perfectly well and is _safe_.
> > First let me post the code to access this backdoor port (the way it
> > should really be done )
> >
> > So whenever we query port 0x5658 , with the GETVERSION command (which
> > is the first thing we do with this port), we expect that eax !=
> > 0xFFFFFFFF and ebx has a VMWARE specific MAGIC value. Please note
> > that ebx has been initialized to zero in the code above.
> >
>
> You have no idea what you just did to a real piece of hardware.
Why ? what do you mean ?
ebx is a local variable in the code above that i posted.
Only when on hypervisor will we write the magic value over there.
How can this affect native hardware, i fail to understand.
Please explain.

Thanks,
Alok
>
> -hpa