Security News > 2020 > December > Monster Azure VM used to play Tetris in Windows Task Manager

Monster Azure VM used to play Tetris in Windows Task Manager
2020-12-07 19:13

Microsoft Azure CTO Mark Russinovich utilized a monster 420 logical processor virtual machine to play Tetris using the CPU core list in Windows Task Manager.

To do this, Russinovich redirected the output of a console Tetris implementation to his 'Task Manager CPU pixel array,' which is likely based on a modified version of TaskManagerBitmap project.

To change the color of a logical core pixel to black, the thread would utilize 100% of the processors CPUE processing power, and turn it white by using 0%. The result is Russinovich playing Tetris via a Windows command prompt with the game's output redirected by the CPU pixel array to the Task Manager, as demonstrated below.

In July 2020, a video was posted to YouTube of this method being to allegedly play Doom via the Windows Task Manager.

Playing a game like Doom on task manager also seems far fetched with how quickly the shade of virtual pixels would need to be changed.


News URL

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/monster-azure-vm-used-to-play-tetris-in-windows-task-manager/