W10 Virtual Secure Mode

[Wheels-Of-Fire]

I just read in my new edition of the Windows Internals part 1 book that versions of W10 that support Hyper-V now also support a new Virtualization based security architecture.

With this model the OS, both user and kernel mode portions, is split into two parts called Virtual trust levels 1 and 2. Both VTL0 and VTL1 run as separate Hyper-V virtual machines  with the most secure sections running on VTL1.

I would like to have a play with this but I only have W10 home where I am so I can’t 😬. Apparently it shows up under Add Windows Features as Isolated User Mode if you would like to see if your system is using it.

You will also need a fairly recent CPU that supports Second Level Address Translation and an I/O MMU.

[Dave Rice]

W10 Pro licences are cheap enough on E-Bay but make sure you get one that supports upgrading.

Sometimes even then the Activation servers don’t like it, but there is a workaround for that (it involves doing the first stage offline) which has always fixed the problem for me.

[Author]

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