| CHAPTER | |
| 24 | Virtual Machines and Cloud Computing |
Gone are the days of the one-to-one relationship between a computer’s operating system (OS) software and its hardware. With virtualization, the underlying hardware platforms no longer matter to the OS, thanks to emulators that translate instructions from the software to the machine. In a virtual machine (VM), the OS (referred to as a “guest OS” when virtualized) and the software applications that it hosts run on virtual hardware.
This creates an interesting security challenge. Most security vulnerabilities that are at risk of exploitation originate from software. In a virtualized environment, everything is software—therefore, the risks are greater. Virtual machines carry their own security ...
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