Hypervisor Memory Access Interception for Host OS Security
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current security techniques are unable to effectively intercept and protect memory accesses and instruction executions on the host operating system, leading to vulnerabilities in preventing security exploits such as privilege escalation and credential theft.
Innovation Solution
A security agent configured to initiate a security agent component as a hypervisor, which determines and sets intercepts on specific memory locations and processor registers, using privilege attributes to control access and redirect operations to prevent malicious activities.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Difficulty of detecting and measuring
If hooks or interception techniques are used to monitor security exploits, then security introspection capability is improved, but the ability to intercept memory accesses and instruction executions on the host OS is lost
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a hypervisor as an intermediary layer between the host OS and the security monitoring system. This hypervisor intercepts memory accesses and instruction executions before they reach the host OS, enabling security introspection of operations that would otherwise be invisible to traditional hooks. The hypervisor acts as a mediator that captures security-relevant events without requiring modification of the host OS itself.
2Reliability
If virtual machines are used to run guest OSes and applications, then application isolation is improved, but system overhead increases and host OS interception capability is lost
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts the security monitoring function from the traditional virtual machine layer and places it at the hypervisor level. Instead of running applications in separate virtual machines for isolation, the system uses a hypervisor that directly intercepts security-relevant operations on the host OS, eliminating the need for full virtual machine overhead while maintaining isolation and monitoring capabilities.
3Ease of manufacture
If traditional hooks are used for security monitoring, then ease of implementation is improved, but the ability to intercept critical host OS operations is lost
Solution Approach 1:
The patent transitions from traditional user-mode or kernel-mode hooks to a hypervisor-level interception mechanism. This dimensional change allows the security monitoring system to intercept operations at a lower level, capturing memory accesses and instruction executions before they reach the host OS kernel or user applications, thereby enabling monitoring of critical operations that traditional hooks cannot access.
Data Source
AI summary
A security agent configured to initiate a security agent component as a hypervisor for a computing device is described herein. The security agent component may then determine pages of the memory which include identified memory locations and set privilege attributes of those pages to prevent specific types of access to the memory locations, such as executing code stored at a memory location. Also, the security agent component may refrain from setting intercepts for pages including a whitelisted memory location. Further, the security agent component may set intercepts for debug registers, note read operations from the operating system for those registers, and respond with operating-system-permitted values. Additionally, the security agent component may set intercepts for instructions for performing write operations on control registers.