Hypervisor Forensics Partition for Scalable VM Data Acquisition
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Solution Overview
Problem
Traditional forensic tools struggle to scale in large datacenter environments, are compromised by sophisticated malware, and cannot acquire live memory or current state of running virtual machines, making it impractical for security investigation and analysis in cloud services.
Innovation Solution
A computer system that acquires forensic data from running virtual machines in a hypervisor-hosted virtualization environment by providing a forensic partition with a service API that targets virtual machines using inter-partition communication mechanisms, such as an inter-partition bus or hypercalls, allowing for centralized acquisition and analysis without installing agents on each host.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If traditional forensic tools are used at host level, then forensic acquisition can be performed on individual hosts, but the solution does not scale in large datacenter environments and can be compromised by sophisticated malware
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a hypervisor as an intermediary layer between the forensic tool and the virtual machine. The forensic tool runs on the hypervisor (external to the guest OS) and communicates with the VM through standardized interfaces. This intermediary position allows the forensic tool to access VM data without being vulnerable to guest OS malware, while also enabling centralized management across multiple VMs without requiring agents on each host.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent shifts the forensic acquisition perspective from the guest OS dimension to the hypervisor dimension. Instead of accessing each VM individually through its guest OS (traditional approach), the solution accesses multiple VMs simultaneously from the hypervisor layer above them. This dimensional shift enables scalable forensic acquisition across entire datacenters while maintaining security against guest-level threats.
2Ease of operation
If an agent is loaded on every host for forensic data acquisition, then centralized control can be achieved, but the solution does not scale well in large environments
Solution Approach 1:
The hypervisor serves as a central intermediary that eliminates the need for distributed agents on each VM. The forensic tool running on the hypervisor can directly access and control multiple VMs through the virtualization layer, providing centralized control without the scalability overhead of managing agents across hundreds or thousands of individual hosts.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent merges the forensic control functionality into the hypervisor layer itself, combining what would traditionally be separate components (centralized controller + distributed agents) into a single centralized platform. This consolidation maintains centralized control capabilities while dramatically improving scalability by eliminating the need for per-host agent deployment and management.
3Loss of information
If forensic acquisition is performed on stored data, then historical data can be analyzed, but live memory or current state of a running virtual machine is not provided
Solution Approach 1:
The patent enables preliminary capture of live VM state (memory, registers, execution context) through the hypervisor before any potential data loss or system changes occur. By accessing the VM at the hypervisor level, the forensic tool can capture volatile data that would be lost if traditional post-mortem analysis were performed, while still allowing the VM to continue running if needed for ongoing operations.
Data Source
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AI summary
A computer system acquires forensics data from running virtual machines in a hypervisor-hosted virtualization environment. The computer system provides a forensics partition as an additional root virtual machine partition or child virtual machine partition. The forensics partition includes a forensics service application programming interface configured to target one or more virtual machines and acquire forensics data from a targeted virtual machine running in a particular child virtual machine partition. The forensics service application programming interface is configured to communicate via one or more inter-partition communication mechanisms such as an inter-partition communication bus, a hyercall interface, or forensics switch implemented by the hypervisor-hosted virtualization environment. The forensics service application programming interface can be exposed to a forensics tool as part of a cloud-based forensics service.