How to check the OS is running on bare metal and not in virtualized environment created by BIOS?

Posted by Arkadi Shishlov on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by Arkadi Shishlov
Published on 2014-08-24T11:34:02Z Indexed on 2014/08/24 16:22 UTC
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Is there any software available as a Linux, *BSD, or Windows program or boot-image to check (or guess with good probability) the environment an operating system is loaded onto is genuine bare metal and not already virtualized?

Given recent information from various sources, including supposed to be E.Snowden leaks, I'm curious about the security of my PC-s, even about those that don't have on-board BMC.

How it could be possible and why? See for example Blue Pill, and a number of papers. With a little assistance from network card firmware, which is also loadable on popular card models, such hypervisor could easily spy on me resulting in PGP, Tor, etc. exercises futile.

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