The Application of Virtual Machines on System Security

It is very important to protect critical resources such as private data and code in computer systems. It is promising to protect private data and to improve the system security by leveraging the isolation attribute of virtual machine (VM). The isolation attribute of VM is provided by Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM) that runs in higher priority than guest OSes. If the critical components are isolated in VMs,access control can be enforced or attestation can be made when the subject is accessing via VMs. In this way, VMs can improve the security level of critical components such as OS, kernel, data, and applications. For computer system security, VMs can be used to detect malware intrusions and to protect critical components, which can be implemented by integrating detection or protection mechanism in either VMM or VMs. Authentication is required to create trustful VMs. This paper surveys technologies related of using virtual machines to enhance system security.