Hypervisor Segmentation for Virtual Machine Escape Prevention
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing virtual machine technologies are vulnerable to security threats, particularly 'virtual machine escape' where a malicious user can exploit hypervisor or hardware emulation faults to access and control both the guest and host machines, posing risks to system security and user data.
Innovation Solution
A system with a hypervisor for monitoring, operating at the highest privilege level, is introduced to detect and prevent security threats by isolating the monitoring hypervisor from the virtualization hypervisor and hardware emulation, using interrupt points and privilege level management to control processes and threads, ensuring that only authorized actions are executed within a sandbox environment.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If a hypervisor for virtualization operates with high privilege level to manage virtual machines, then virtualization control capability is improved, but system security deteriorates due to potential escape attacks
Solution Approach 1:
The system divides the hypervisor functionality into two separate components: a virtualization hypervisor for managing VM operations and a monitoring hypervisor for security oversight. This segmentation allows each component to operate with appropriate privilege levels, maintaining virtualization control while enhancing security through isolated monitoring capabilities.
Solution Approach 2:
The monitoring hypervisor acts as an intermediary between the virtualization hypervisor and the host system. It intercepts and monitors virtualization instructions, providing a security layer that can detect and prevent escape attacks without interfering with normal virtualization operations.
2Reliability
If a monitoring hypervisor is introduced to detect security threats, then system security is improved, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The monitoring hypervisor and virtualization hypervisor share the same architectural framework and run on the same host system. They utilize common resources such as the hardware virtualization extensions and host operating system interfaces, reducing overall system complexity despite the added security layer.
Data Source
AI summary
Disclosed herein are an apparatus and method for preventing a security threat to a virtual machine. The apparatus includes one or more processors and executable memory for storing at least one program executed by the one or more processors. The at least one program is configured such that a hypervisor for virtualization in a host kernel executes a virtualization instruction corresponding to the service requested by a virtual machine of a host application and such that a hypervisor for monitoring interrupts the virtualization instruction in response to a security threat event occurring in the monitoring area of the hypervisor for virtualization and controls the process and thread of the host kernel. The hypervisor for monitoring is located in an area separate from the area in which the hypervisor for virtualization is located in the host kernel.