Is easter eggs in VM a good idea?
Couldn't malware attempt to locate potential easter eggs in order to determine if they are in a honeypot?
Couldn't malware attempt to locate potential easter eggs in order to determine if they are in a honeypot?
No. This is a key combination against the UI. If the VM could send key combinations to the UI of the VMC then the software running on the VM could determine if it was in a "honeypot" (VM) with or without this easter-egg (e.g. send CTRL-ALT-INSERT and see if CTRL-ALT-DELETE is triggered within the VM's context, restart the VM, alter connected devices, and so on).
Also, yes, I think Easter Eggs are fine in a VMC. Particularly when they're only UI deep as is this case. The only software I wouldn't put easter eggs into is software which is "life-death critical" (aircraft control systems, industrial equipment, et al). But these kind of systems are sometimes designed to be mathematically proven safe with no possible conflating variables in the execution (so putting in easter eggs would be HUGELY expensive and likely wouldn't happen for that reason).