Practical Malware Analysis

The Structure of a Virtual Machine

Virtual machines are like a computer inside a computer, as illustrated in Figure 2-1. A guest OS is installed within the host OS on a virtual machine, and the OS running in the virtual machine is kept isolated from the host OS. Malware running on a virtual machine cannot harm the host OS. And if the malware damages the virtual machine, you can simply reinstall the OS in the virtual machine or return the virtual machine to a clean state.

Figure 2-1. Traditional applications run as shown in the left column. The guest OS is contained entirely within the virtual machine, and the virtual applications are contained within ...