BitVisor: a thin hypervisor for enforcing i/o device security

  • Authors:

  • Takahiro Shinagawa;Hideki Eiraku;Kouichi Tanimoto;Kazumasa Omote;Shoichi Hasegawa;Takashi Horie;Manabu Hirano;Kenichi Kourai;Yoshihiro Oyama;Eiji Kawai;Kenji Kono;Shigeru Chiba;Yasushi Shinjo;Kazuhiko Kato

  • Affiliations:

  • University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan;University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan;University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan;Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Nomi, Ishikawa, Japan;University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan;University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan;Toyota National College of Technology, Toyota, Aichi, Japan;Kyushu Institute of Technology, Kitakyushu, Fukuoka, Japan;University of Electro-Communications, Chofu, Tokyo, Japan;Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Ikoma, Nara, Japan;Keio University, Yokohama, Kanagawa, Japan;Tokyo Institute of Technology, Meguro, Tokyo, Japan;University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan;University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 2009 ACM SIGPLAN/SIGOPS international conference on Virtual execution environments
  • Year:
  • 2009

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Abstract

Virtual machine monitors (VMMs), including hypervisors, are a popular platform for implementing various security functionalities. However, traditional VMMs require numerous components for providing virtual hardware devices and for sharing and protecting system resources among virtual machines (VMs), enlarging the code size of and reducing the reliability of the VMMs. This paper introduces a hypervisor architecture, called parapass-through, designed to minimize the code size of hypervisors by allowing most of the I/O access from the guest operating system (OS) to pass-through the hypervisor, while the minimum access necessary to implement security functionalities is completely mediated by the hypervisor. This architecture uses device drivers of the guest OS to handle devices, thereby reducing the size of components in the hypervisor to provide virtual devices. This architecture also allows to run only single VM on it, eliminating the components for sharing and protecting system resources among VMs. We implemented a hypervisor called BitVisor and a parapass-through driver for enforcing storage encryption of ATA devices based on the parapass-through architecture. The experimental result reveals that the hypervisor and ATA driver require approximately 20 kilo lines of code (KLOC) and 1.4 KLOC respectively.