From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1Mi9OL-0000V9-56 for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Mon, 31 Aug 2009 12:06:01 -0400 Received: from exim by lists.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1Mi9OG-0000Pd-Fc for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Mon, 31 Aug 2009 12:06:00 -0400 Received: from [199.232.76.173] (port=57705 helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1Mi9OG-0000P3-7X for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Mon, 31 Aug 2009 12:05:56 -0400 Received: from relay2.ancitel.it ([194.177.104.129]:24366) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1Mi9OF-0000Gt-Oz for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Mon, 31 Aug 2009 12:05:55 -0400 Date: Mon, 31 Aug 2009 18:08:25 +0200 From: "Bud P. Bruegger" Message-ID: <20090831180825.6ed2ea55@bud-laptop> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Subject: [Qemu-devel] QEMU as a "virtual smart card"? List-Id: qemu-devel.nongnu.org List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , To: qemu-devel@nongnu.org Cc: John Forrester Hello everyone, we are thinking of a possibly "exotic" use of QEMU and would like to ask your advice on whether we are going in the right direction. We are pondering of how to use a virtual machine to have some security features normally associated with hard tokens such as smart cards. In particular, one of the key concepts of smart cards is that they can store secret keys that never leave the device but can only be used by a trusted and protected internal CPU for encryption/signing. At least looking naively at QEMU, it seems that its CPU and RAM are well protected from the host operating system--in a way to say make it practically impossible for some malware to extract the secret key used in a virtual machine. Is this a valid conception of what QEMU does? How good is the isolation of a virtual machine from the host operating system. We are also interested in the isolation of input devices, in particularly the keyboard as to prevent PIN sniffing. My "naive" impression is that key logging for a PS/2 keyboard is probably more difficult than with a USB keyboard. Is there any thruth to my misconception? Finally one last question questions: * Is there any way of getting exclusive access to an USB pen drive from a virtual machine, preventing the host operating system to say take an image of the content? many thanks in advance for any input and illuminations! -bud