PROTECTION OF DATA FROM VIRTUAL MACHINE CLONES VIA PARAVIRTUALIZATION

A system and method for protecting secure data from virtual machine clones are disclosed. In accordance with one embodiment, a hypervisor receives a message from a guest operating system hosted by a first virtual machine, where the message identifies a memory location (e.g., of main memory, of a storage device, etc.) for a secure datum. After the hypervisor receives a direct-copy command to clone the first virtual machine, the hypervisor creates a second virtual machine via direct copy, where the second virtual machine is not provided access to the secure memory location during its creation.