1. SubVirt: Implementing malware with virtual machines
2006 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (S&P)
SubVirt: Implementing malware with virtual machines
14 pages, cited: 163
Samuel T. King, Peter M. Chen (University of Michigan)
Yi-Min Wang, Chad Verbowski, Helen J. Wang, and Jacob R. Lorch (Microsoft Research)
proof-of-concept
By Mike Hsiao,

2. Outline Introduction Virtual machines
Virtual-machine based rootkit design and implementation
Evaluation
Defending against virtual-machine based rootkits
Related work
Conclusions

3. Introduction New type of malware
Virtual-machine based rootkit (VMBR) installs a VM monitor underneath an existing operating system and hoists the original operating system into a virtual machine.
rootkit: tools used to hide malicious activities
VMBR are hard to detect and remove because their state cannot be accessed by software running in the target system.
Further, VMBRs support general-purpose malicious services by allowing such services to run in a separate operating system

4. Introduction (cont’d)
A major goal of malware writers is control.
Controlling the system allows malware to remain invisible by lying to or disabling intrusion detection software.
Lower layers can control upper layers.
If the defender’s security service occupies a lower layer than the malware, then that security service should be able to detect, contain, and remove the malware.
E.g., ps, kernel-level rootkit, check the integrity of the kernel ds, hide/check memory footprint,

5. Virtual machines
A virtual-machine monitor (VMM) manages the resources of the underlying hardware and provides an abstraction of one or more virtual machines.
Multiplexing computer’s hardware
Isolate all resources of each virtual computer
VM services are implemented outside the guest they are serving in order to avoid perturbing the guest.

6. Virtual machines (cont’d)
VM services
debug operating systems and system configurations
migrate live machines
detect or prevent intrusions
Software running outside of a VM views low-level VM state such as disk blocks, network packets, and memory.
Software inside the VM interprets this state as high-level abstractions such as files, TCP connections, and variables.
It is called the semantic gap. Virtual-machine introspection (VMI) [18, 27] describes techniques that enables a VM service to understand and modify states and events within the guest.
[18] T. Garfinkel and M. Rosenblum, “A Virtual Machine Introspection Based Architecture for Intrusion Detection,” in proc. NDSS, 2003.
[27] A. Joshi, S. T. King, G. W. Dunlap, and P. M. Chen, “Detecting past and present intrusions through vulnerability-specific predicates,” in proc. SOSP, 2005.

7. Virtual-machine based rootkit design and implementation
3.1 describes how a VMBR is installed on an existing system.
3.2 describes the techniques VMBRs use to implement malicious services, and
3.3 discusses the example malicious services we implemented.
3.4 explains how VMBRs maintain control over the system.
They implemented two proof-of-concept VMBRs for the x86 platform using Virtual PC and VMware Workstation VMMs.
The Virtual PC VMBR uses a minimized version of Windows XP for the host OS and the VMware VMBR uses Gentoo Linux.
They modify the host Windows XP kernel, Virtual PC, and the host Linux kernel. (They don’t have VMware source code.)

8. Installation
To insert itself beneath an existing system, a VMBR manipulate the system boot sequence to ensure that the VMBR loads before the target OS.
After the VMBR loads, it boots the target OS using the VMM. As a result, the target OS runs normally, but the VMBR sits silently beneath it.

9. Installation (cont’d)
Master
boot
record
Boot
sector
BIOS OS
Original Boot sequence
VMBR
loads
BIOS
Master
boot
record
Boot
sector
BIOS OS
Modified
Boot sequence

10. Installation (cont’d)
To install a VMBR on a computer, an attacker must first gain access to the system with sufficient privileges to modify the system boot sequence.
exploit a remote vulnerability
fool a user into installing malicious software
bribe an OEM or vendor
corrupt a bootable CDROM or DVD image on P2P
Install the VMBR’s state on persistent storage
unused blocks elsewhere on the disk (Windows)
Disable swapping and use the swap partition (Linux)

11. Installation (cont’d)
Modify the system’s boot sequence to ensure our VMBR loads before the target OS
modify the boot records on the primary hard disk
But, anti-malware applications detect modifications to the hard disk’s boot blocks.
But, the author manipulate the boot blocks during the final stages of shutdown (after most processes and kernel subsystems have exited).
Windows XP: registers a LastChanceShutdown Notification event handler
They use the low-level disk driver to copy our VMBR boot code (to bypass the file system layer).
Linux: modify the boot sequence using user-mode code
They modify the shutdown scripts so that our installation code runs after all processes have been killed but before the system shuts down.

12. Malicious services
VMBRs use a separate attack OS to deploy malware that is invisible from the perspective of the target OS but is still easy to implement.
Three categories (malicious services)
those that need not interact with the target system at all
E.g., spam relays, DDoS zombies, phishing web servers
those that observe information about the target system
VMBRs can use virtual-machine introspection to help observe and understand the software-level abstractions in the target OS and applications.
Not affect the virtual devices presented to the target OS.
E.g., VMBRs enable logging of hardware-level data (e.g., keystrokes, packets)
E.g., if a target application uses an encrypted socket, attackers can use virtual-machine introspection to trap all SSL socket write calls and log the clear-text data before it is encrypted.
those that intentionally perturb the execution of the target system
The third class of malicious service deliberately modifies the execution of the target system.
A VMBR can customize the VMM’s device emulation layer to modify hardware-level data.

13. Example malicious services
The author implemented
a phishing web server,
in another VM
a keystroke logger,
in the VMM keyboard control module
a service that scans the target file system looking for sensitive files, and
use VM introspection to scan the target OS’s file system to copy the password file
a defense countermeasure that defeats a current virtual-machine detector.
redpill [39]
[39] J. Rutkowska. Red Pill... or how to detect VMM using (almost) one CPU instruction, 2005.

14. Maintaining control
To avoid being removed, a VMBR must protect its state by maintaining control of the system.
The only time the VMBR loses control of the system is in the period of time after the system powers up until the VMBR starts.
The first code is BIOS.
By restarting the virtual hardware, VMBRs provide the illusion of resetting the underlying physical hardware without relinquishing control.
VMBRs can also emulate system shutdowns such that the system appears to shutdown, but the VMBR remains running on the system.
We use ACPI sleep states to emulate system shutdowns and to avoid system power-downs.
When the user “powers-up” the system by pressing the power button the VMBR resumes. (powers-off only suspends the VMBR)

15. Evaluation VMware-based VMBR Virtual PC-based VMBR
Run on a Dell Optiplex Workstation with a 2.8 GHz Pentium 4 and 1 GB of RAM
compromises a RedHat Enterprise Linux 4 target system
VMBR image 228/95 MB (un-/uncompressed)
Virtual PC-based VMBR
a Compaq Deskpro EN with a 1 GHz Pentium 4 and 256 MB of RAM
compromises a Windows XP target system
VMBR image 251/106 MB (un-/uncompressed)

16. Evaluation – installation/boot time (sec)
Actual memory usage is 3% for the extra VMM.

17. Defending against virtual-machine based rootkits
Security software below the VMBR
Such detection software can read physical memory or disk and look for signatures or anomalies that indicate the presence of a VMBR.
Other low-level techniques such as secure boot can ensure the integrity of the boot sequence and prevent a VMBR from gaining control before the target OS.
Intel’s LaGrande [25], AMD’s platform for trustworthy computing [2], and Copilot [36].
Boot from a safe medium such as a CD-ROM, USB drive or network boot server
Use a secure VMM [17] (Terra)
does not by itself stop a VMBR, but does retain control over the system

18. Defending against virtual-machine based rootkits (cont’d)
Security software above the VMBR
(CPU overhead) by comparing the running time of benchmarks against wall-clock time
(memory and disk space) extra paging activity may increase the running time of the program
(I/O devices) VMMs only emulate a small number of virtual devices (often with customized interfaces to improve performance)
(x86 processor features) sidt

19. Related work Layer-below attacks
operating system kernel
Using virtual machines to enhance security
VMs to detect intrusions, analyze intrusions
isolate services
encrypt network traffic
implement honeypots
Detect the presence of VMMs
Inserting new software layers into existing systems
A key feature of all these applications is that they preserve compatibility with existing systems by not modifying interfaces of the existing layers.
E.g., file system, firewall

20. Comments Considering the characteristics of VM in security issues.
VMM layer
VM Image can be ”power on/off”
Some people don’t like VM environment.
How to detect that I’m in a VM?
How do I know my host/VMM/VM/OS is secure?
Can other vulnerable or hostile VM penetrate my VM?
Auditing mechanisms (such as VMMs) are benefits or harms for me?
Provide better visibility!