Agree with you, at least from a "can we do this" perspective- I've done something similar a while back, but that was with Linux liveboot (all in memory) and an NFS file mount that overlaid a real directory... fuse does this elegantly today.
But this is a full Windows OS with MSSQL running on it. IOPS alone would negate this possibility, excepting server-class hardware with 10GE or FC SAN connectivity- which the Dell laptop in the video didn't have.
IOPS aren't a problem here because once loaded into memory the OS-Wrapper is local. The OS is local Disk, the Database is Local Disk, all the programs are local. Only the OS wrapper, the crack, and or remote administration tool is loaded from network all are very small and once initially would stay in memory.
IOPs aren't an issue because the VM is reading OS wrapper from Memory, that it got over the Network, and everything else is read from disk, with either the crack, or remote administration tool ran remotely from the network. The OS wrapper could be under 50MB. The Crack and RAT would both be less than 3MB, and once ran load would stay in memory.
Everything except for RAT or Crack, would simply be read from local disk. Minimal network transfers.
EDIT 1 -- FYI
They make linux versions for just this purpose minimal size and overhead for running VMs
EDIT 3. This is really looking doable with less than 50MB total payload, plus the OSwrapper could also run a PXE boot server, and answer local BOOTP/DHCP requests meaning it only has to be transfered once. On a 100mb connection a 50M file could be downloaded in less than 6 seconds for the initial, and then all other machines on the network could be done at local gigabit speeds.
Agree with you, at least from a "can we do this" perspective- I've done something similar a while back, but that was with Linux liveboot (all in memory) and an NFS file mount that overlaid a real directory... fuse does this elegantly today.
But this is a full Windows OS with MSSQL running on it. IOPS alone would negate this possibility, excepting server-class hardware with 10GE or FC SAN connectivity- which the Dell laptop in the video didn't have.
IOPS aren't a problem here because once loaded into memory the OS-Wrapper is local. The OS is local Disk, the Database is Local Disk, all the programs are local. Only the OS wrapper, the crack, and or remote administration tool is loaded from network all are very small and once initially would stay in memory.
IOPs aren't an issue because the VM is reading OS wrapper from Memory, that it got over the Network, and everything else is read from disk, with either the crack, or remote administration tool ran remotely from the network. The OS wrapper could be under 50MB. The Crack and RAT would both be less than 3MB, and once ran load would stay in memory.
Everything except for RAT or Crack, would simply be read from local disk. Minimal network transfers.
EDIT 1 -- FYI They make linux versions for just this purpose minimal size and overhead for running VMs
https://computingforgeeks.com/minimal-container-operating-systems-for-kubernetes/
EDIT 2 --ADDITIONAL FYI Fedora CoreOS for PXE boot is 10MB compressed. https://getfedora.org/en/coreos/download?tab=metal_virtualized&stream=stable
EDIT 3. This is really looking doable with less than 50MB total payload, plus the OSwrapper could also run a PXE boot server, and answer local BOOTP/DHCP requests meaning it only has to be transfered once. On a 100mb connection a 50M file could be downloaded in less than 6 seconds for the initial, and then all other machines on the network could be done at local gigabit speeds.