Virtual machines and Software Frameworks are an initial part of our digital life. There are complex VM and simple Software Frameworks. I did my best to describe the way VM code may interact with native code and the Operating System, however, the backwards interaction is still left unexplained. This article is going to fix this omission.

There has been said and written too much on how software vendors do not protect their products, so let me skip this. Instead, in this article, I would like to concentrate on those relatively easy steps, which software vendors have to take in order to enhance their protection (using packers and protectors is good, but certainly not enough) by not letting the whole code appear in memory in readable form for a single moment.

In this article, I would like to cover the basics of executable code obfuscation - a relatively simple technique, which is, unfortunately, rarely utilized by software vendors as they mostly rely on out of the box solutions.

In computing, Virtual Machine (VM) is a software implementation of either existing or a fictional hardware platform. VM's are generally divided into two classes - system VM (VM which is capable of running an operating system) and process VM (the one that only can run one executable, roughly saying).

So. Executable code injection. In general, this term is associated with malicious intent. It is true in many cases, but in, at least, as many, it is not. Being malware researcher for the most of my career, I can assure you, that this technique appears to be very useful when researching malicious software, as it allows (in most cases) to defeat its protection and gather much of the needed information. Although, it is highly recommended not to use such approach, sometimes it is simply unavoidable.