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A feather-weight virtual machine for windows applications

Published: 14 June 2006 Publication History

Abstract

Many fault-tolerant and intrusion-tolerant systems require the ability to execute unsafe programs in a realistic environment without leaving permanent damages. Virtual machine technology meets this requirement perfectly because it provides an execution environment that is both realistic and isolated. In this paper, we introduce an OS level virtual machine architecture for Windows applications called Feather-weight Virtual Machine (FVM), under which virtual machines share as many resources of the host machine as possible while still isolated from one another and from the host machine. The key technique behind FVM is namespace virtualization, which isolates virtual machines by renaming resources at the OS system call interface. Through a copy-on-write scheme, FVM allows multiple virtual machines to physically share resources but logically isolate their resources from each other. A main technical challenge in FVM is how to achieve strong isolation among different virtual machines and the host machine, due to numerous namespaces and interprocess communication mechanisms on Windows. Experimental results demonstrate that FVM is more flexible and scalable, requires less system resource, incurs lower start-up and run-time performance overhead than existing hardware-level virtual machine technologies, and thus makes a compelling building block for security and fault-tolerant applications.

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cover image ACM Conferences
VEE '06: Proceedings of the 2nd international conference on Virtual execution environments
June 2006
194 pages
ISBN:1595933328
DOI:10.1145/1134760
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Publication History

Published: 14 June 2006

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Author Tags

  1. copy on write
  2. mobile code security
  3. namespace virtualization
  4. system call interception
  5. virtual machine

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Cited By

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  • (2017)RoppDroidComputers and Security10.1016/j.cose.2017.04.00268:C(98-111)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2017
  • (2016)Design and implementation of sandbox technique for isolated applications2016 IEEE Information Technology, Networking, Electronic and Automation Control Conference10.1109/ITNEC.2016.7560422(557-561)Online publication date: May-2016
  • (2016)Transitioning Native Application into Virtual Machine by Using Hardware Virtualization Extensions2016 International Symposium on Computer, Consumer and Control (IS3C)10.1109/IS3C.2016.108(397-403)Online publication date: Jul-2016
  • (2016)Virtualization methods for securing online exam2016 International Conference on Data and Software Engineering (ICoDSE)10.1109/ICODSE.2016.7936145(1-7)Online publication date: Oct-2016
  • (2015)A behavioral anomaly detection strategy based on time series process portraits for desktop virtualization systemsCluster Computing10.1007/s10586-015-0431-218:2(979-988)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2015
  • (2014)A Comparison of Sandbox Technologies Used in Online Judge SystemsApplied Mechanics and Materials10.4028/www.scientific.net/AMM.490-491.1201490-491(1201-1204)Online publication date: Jan-2014
  • (2014)Towards a Flexible, Lightweight Virtualization AlternativeProceedings of International Conference on Systems and Storage10.1145/2611354.2611369(1-7)Online publication date: 30-Jun-2014
  • (2014)ShuttleIEEE Transactions on Computers10.1109/TC.2012.29763:5(1220-1233)Online publication date: 1-May-2014
  • (2014)A Light-Weight Software Environment for Confining Android MalwareProceedings of the 2014 IEEE Eighth International Conference on Software Security and Reliability-Companion10.1109/SERE-C.2014.34(158-167)Online publication date: 30-Jun-2014
  • (2014)AppCloakProceedings of the 2014 IEEE International Conference on Cloud Computing10.1109/CLOUD.2014.112(810-817)Online publication date: 27-Jun-2014
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