DMCA
HyperSentry: Enabling Stealthy In-context Measurement of Hypervisor Integrity ∗
Cached
Download Links
| Citations: | 58 - 1 self |
BibTeX
@MISC{Azab_hypersentry:enabling,
author = {Ahmed M. Azab and Peng Ning and Zhi Wang and Xuxian Jiang and Xiaolan Zhang and Nathan C. Skalsky},
title = {HyperSentry: Enabling Stealthy In-context Measurement of Hypervisor Integrity ∗},
year = {}
}
Share
 |
 |
 |
 |
||
OpenURL
Abstract
This paper presents HyperSentry, a novel framework to enable integrity measurement of a running hypervisor (or any other highest privileged software layer on a system). Unlike existing solutions for protecting privileged software, Hyper-Sentry does not introduce a higher privileged software layer below the integrity measurement target, which could start another race with malicious attackers in obtaining the highest privilege in the system. Instead, HyperSentry introduces a software component that is properly isolated from the hypervisor to enable stealthy and in-context measurement of the runtime integrity of the hypervisor. While stealthiness is necessary to ensure that a compromised hypervisor does not have a chance to hide the attack traces upon detecting an up-coming measurement, in-context measurement is necessary to retrieve all the needed inputs for a successful integrity measurement. HyperSentry uses an out-of-band channel (e.g., Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI), which is commonly available on server platforms) to trigger the stealthy measurement, and adopts the System Management Mode (SMM) to protect its base code and critical data. A key contribution of HyperSentry is the set of novel techniques that overcome SMM’s limitation, providing an integrity measurement agent with (1) the same contextual information available to the hypervisor, (2) completely protected execution, and (3) attestation to its output. To evaluate HyperSentry,
Keyphrases
enabling stealthy in-context measurement hypervisor integrity in-context measurement novel technique up-coming measurement malicious attacker software layer system management mode critical data integrity measurement agent privileged software successful integrity measurement running hypervisor runtime integrity contextual information protected execution integrity measurement novel framework integrity measurement target privileged software layer compromised hypervisor out-of-band channel base code software component intelligent platform management interface key contribution smm limitation stealthy measurement server platform
