Virtual machine introspection
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Virtual machine introspection (VMI) is a technique for monitoring the runtime state of a system-level virtual machine (VM), which is helpful for debugging or forensic analysis.[1][2] Virtual machine introspection was originally introduced by Garfinkel and Rosenblum[3] as a way to protect a security application from attack by malicious software. Now VMI is used for security applications, software debugging, and systems management.
VMI tools may be located inside or outside the virtual machine and act by tracking the events (interrupts, memory writes, and so on) or sending the requests to the virtual machine. Virtual machine monitor usually provides low-level information like raw bytes of the memory. Converting this low-level view into something meaningful for the user is known as the semantic gap problem. Solving this problem requires analysis and understanding of the systems being monitored.
VMI within the virtual machine
Programs running inside VM may provide information about other processes. This information may be sent through network interface or some virtual devices like serial port. The examples of in vivo introspection programs are WinDbg[4] or GDB[5] servers that interact with the remote debugger.
This approach requires functioning OS within the VM. If OS hangs or isn't loaded yet, the introspection agent couldn't work.
VMI outside the virtual machine
VMI tools may be implemented within the virtual machine monitor[6] or as a separate programs[7] that capture information (e.g., contents of the memory) from the virtual machine monitor. Then this data has to be interpreted to understand the processes in the system. E.g., data extraction from the virtual machine memory mey be performed via Volatility framework[8]. This framework contains profiles for many popular operating systems and may extract different information like process tree or list of the kernel objects.
References
- ^ https://github.com/libvmi/libvmi
- ^ https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007%2F978-1-4419-5906-5_647 Encyclopedia of Cryptography and Security: Virtual Machine Introspection
- ^ https://suif.stanford.edu/papers/vmi-ndss03.pdf
- ^ https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/debugger/remode-debugging-using-windbg
- ^ https://sourceware.org/gdb/onlinedocs/gdb/Server.html
- ^ https://wiki.xenproject.org/wiki/Virtual_Machine_Introspection VMI in Xen
- ^ https://github.com/Cisco-Talos/pyrebox
- ^ https://github.com/volatilityfoundation/volatility