This reminds me of how having the right SMBIOS was necessary to create a working Hackintosh. There are so many of these relatively obscure APIs which have been added to the PC over the years, which are often overlooked by those writing virtualisation software, and malware and other VM detection software often tries to poke at them to see how real they look.
A next step to making the VM look real is having simulated temperature sensors that actually change in response to CPU load.
> Or maybe just increments to absurd numbers or negative values. Or locks up when probed.
unironically that would mimick a bunch of existing hardware out there. I owned a PC motherboard that always reported a -65535c in a non existing sensor.
my guess is some sensor described but non existing, probably reporting an infinite value of resistance of some unused pin...
A next step to making the VM look real is having simulated temperature sensors that actually change in response to CPU load.