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Message-ID: <1486777021.2096.36.camel@redhat.com>
Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2017 20:37:01 -0500
From: Rik van Riel <riel@...hat.com>
To: Kees Cook <keescook@...omium.org>, Matthew Giassa <matthew@...ssa.net>
Cc: "kernel-hardening@...ts.openwall.com"
	 <kernel-hardening@...ts.openwall.com>,
        KVM <kvm@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: Introduction + new project: "rootkit
 detection using virtualization".

On Fri, 2017-02-10 at 15:27 -0800, Kees Cook wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 10, 2017 at 2:00 PM, Matthew Giassa <matthew@...ssa.net>
> wrote:
> > Good day,
> > 
> > I am a volunteer developer taking up a project originally proposed
> > by
> > Rik van Riel, "rootkit detection using virtualization", and am
> > planning to contribute regularly to this project over the coming
> > months. I was advised to contact these mailing lists to introduce
> > myself, and I also wanted to inquire about any existing projects
> > that
> > coincide with this work. My initial work will involved diving into
> > KVM
> > + qemu source and deciding how best to approach the problem. While
> > I
> > have the attention of list members, are there any specific
> > individuals/groups I should contact directly with respect to this
> > type
> > of project?
> > 
> > Thank you.
> 
> Hi! Welcome to the list(s)!
> 
> I think this is an interesting area of research, though it may be a
> tricky cat/mouse game. Some of this kind of
> hypervisor-protects-the-kernel work has been done on some Android
> phones in small areas (see the cred protection near the end):
> 
> http://keenlab.tencent.com/en/2016/06/01/Emerging-Defense-in-Android-
> Kernel/

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.

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