Re: [kernel-hardening] Introduction + new project: "rootkit detection using virtualization".

[Matthew Garrett <mjg59@srcf.ucam.org>]

On Fri, Feb 10, 2017 at 08:37:01PM -0500, Rik van Riel wrote:
> One of the things that Matthew can do is build on
> the read-only memory protections in the kernel, and
> have the hypervisor enforce that the memory the kernel
> marks as read-only is never written from inside the
> virtual machine, until the next reboot.
> 
> That seems like it might be a useful place to start,
> since it would immediately make the other read-only
> protections that people are working on much harder to
> get around, at least inside virtual machines.

I agree that this is valuable, but it feels like doing so probably 
involves designing a consistent mechanism for lightweight 
kernel→hypervisor calls - the existing vfio framework seems heavier than 
necessary for this kind of thing. Going further probably involves having 
a good way for syscalls to call into the hypervisor, but again finding a 
generic solution that doesn't add too much overhead seems like a good 
plan. My implementation of this was very special cased and didn't 
attempt to do anything in a generic way, so I'm definitely not a good 
model!

-- 
Matthew Garrett | mjg59@srcf.ucam.org