Formal requirements for virtualizable third generation architectures
Communications of the ACM
IEEE Internet Computing
Communications of the ACM - Digital rights management
Virtualizing I/O Devices on VMware Workstation's Hosted Virtual Machine Monitor
Proceedings of the General Track: 2002 USENIX Annual Technical Conference
Digital rights management for content distribution
ACSW Frontiers '03 Proceedings of the Australasian information security workshop conference on ACSW frontiers 2003 - Volume 21
WMCSA '02 Proceedings of the Fourth IEEE Workshop on Mobile Computing Systems and Applications
Memory resource management in VMware ESX server
OSDI '02 Proceedings of the 5th symposium on Operating systems design and implementationCopyright restrictions prevent ACM from being able to make the PDFs for this conference available for downloading
Establishing the genuinity of remote computer systems
SSYM'03 Proceedings of the 12th conference on USENIX Security Symposium - Volume 12
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This paper examines the architecture of present day systems and shows that they are not trustworthy enough to support certain DRM features/restrictions, even when the DRM delivery system exclusively utilizes signed and protected operating system components. This weakness was discovered while creating a technique for remote transfer of audio streams generated by a Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM), to achieve network transparency for audio devices. The technique is based on the implementation of hosted I/O VMMs that intercept device I/O instructions executed by a "guest" O/S and emulate them through system calls processed by device drivers of a "host" O/S. The design consists of a virtual audio device driver that forwards sound streams to a user-level network server. Because (1) the virtual device intercepts audio data in an unprotected format (WAV), regardless of which application and file format are in use by the guest O/S, (2) modern virtual machine-based systems already achieve performance levels that allow for real-time audio playback, the playback only model of service/restriction imposed by some content delivery businesses is rendered ineffective by this technique. It enables Fair Use of DRM enabled media by allowing the user to make a copy of legally purchased audio media and time-shifting of Internet Radio stations. Experiments have shown that audibly perfect copies of media played by a VM "guest" can be made in PCM/WAV format, even though DRM-enabling features are present in the "guest" O/S drivers and media players. This paper also draws attention to the fact that the VM should be considered while designing the security and DRM capabilities in future general-purpose systems since a device driver in between the VMM and the host O/S has the potential of being an eavesdropper and a malicious end user.