Traps, events, emulation, and enforcement
Sergey Bratus, Michael E. Locasto, Ashwin Ramaswamy, Sean W. Smith · 2008
We question current trends that attempt to leverage virtualization techniques to achieve security goals. We suggest that the security role of a virtual machine centers on being a policy interpreter rather than a resource provider. These two roles (security reference monitor and resource emulator) are currently conflated within the context of virtual machines and VMMs. We believe that this ``double-duty'' leads to both a significant performance impact as well as a bloated virtualization layer. Increased complexity reduces confidence that the code is elementary enough to verify or trust from a security perspective. Ironically, as more security-related functionality is shoved into a VM platform, the system becomes less trustworthy as it becomes increasingly trusted.