Dailydave: Re: Blue Pill (abusing AMD's virtualization to write rootkits)

[Joanna Rutkowska <joanna () invisiblethings org>]

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Dave Aitel wrote:
/.../
> http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1983037,00.asp
>
> I guess it's a permanent thing that a new operating system comes out
> with new security features and people point out that those features
> don't, in any sense of the word, work.
I need to clarify it again: blue pill does not rely on any bug in the
underlying OS, so it's not a MS fault ;)

As to the attack for bypassing the kernel protection... well, it's just
extremely hard to change a general purpose OS into a very secure system
with 100% protected kernel. MS did a right (IMHO) step towards securing
the kernel and this is *good*. Please remember that just a few months
ago there was a presentation at CanSecWest about how to insert arbitrary
code into BSD kernel (thus bypassing its famous securelevel protection)
by exploiting another design flaw (SMM vs. X Server)...

joanna.

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