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http://dx.doi.org/10.13089/JKIISC.2019.29.5.961

Implementation of Covert Channel Using Mutex Shared Resources in Virtual Machine  

Ko, Ki-Wan (Sungkyunkwan University)
Choi, Hyoung-Kee (Sungkyunkwan University)
Publication Information
Journal of the Korea Institute of Information Security & Cryptology / v.29, no.5, 2019 , pp. 961-971 More about this Journal
Abstract
Isolation between virtual machines in a cloud computing environment is an important security factor. The violation of isolation between virtual machines leads to interferences of shared resources and the implementation of covert channels. In this paper, the structure of Hyper-V hypervisor is analyzed to implement covert channels between virtual machines. Hyper-V uses a mutex technique for mutual exclusion between virtual machines. It indicates that isolation of virtual machines is violated and covert channels can be implemented due to mutex. We implemented several covert channels by designing a method for searching mutex resources applicable to Hyper-V with complex architectures. The mutex-based covert channel is not hardware dependent. If the covert channel is detected or defended, the defensive technique can be avoided by using the other covert channel among several covert channels.
Keywords
Cloud Computing; Virtualization; Covert Channel;
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