A secure virtual execution environment for untrusted code

  • Authors:

  • Yan Wen;Huaimin Wang

  • Affiliations:

  • School of Computer, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha, China;School of Computer, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha, China

  • Venue:
  • ICISC'07 Proceedings of the 10th international conference on Information security and cryptology
  • Year:
  • 2007

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Abstract

This paper proposes a Secure Virtual Execution Environment called Pollux for untrusted code. Pollux achieves both the OS isolation and the functionality benefits provided by the isolated untrusted applications. It accomplishes the OS isolation by introducing a hosted virtual machine as the untrusted code container. The key feature of Pollux is its capability of reproducing the host execution environment, thus the behavior of isolated applications recurs as if they were running natively within the host OS. This characteristic is accomplished by the novel local-booted technology, which means the virtual machine boots not from a newly installed OS image but just from the preinstalled host OS. Thus, Pollux provides security against potential malicious code without negating the functionality benefits of benign programs. This paper focuses on the architecture of Pollux and outlines the implementation framework.