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NIST IR 8221 (Initial Public Draft)

A Methodology for Determining Forensic Data Requirements for Detecting Hypervisor Attacks

Date Published: September 2018
Comments Due: October 12, 2018 (public comment period is CLOSED)
Email Questions to: nistir8221@nist.gov

Author(s)

Ramaswamy Chandramouli (NIST), Anoop Singhal (NIST), Duminda Wijesekera (NIST), Changwei Liu (NIST)

Announcement

Hardware/Server Virtualization is now an integral feature of the infrastructure of data centers used for cloud computing services as well as for enterprise computing. One of the key strategies for vulnerability management of the core software that provides virtualization (i.e., hypervisor) is devising a methodology for determining forensic data requirements for detecting attacks on this software.  This document outlines one such methodology by developing a profile of vulnerabilities in terms of hypervisor functionality (attack vectors), attack type and attack source, performing attacks using predominant vulnerabilities and identifying the available and missing data for reconstructing the attack execution path.

Abstract

Keywords

cloud computing; forensic analysis; hypervisors; KVM; vulnerabilities; Xen
Control Families

None selected

Documentation

Publication:
Draft NISTIR 8221 (pdf)

Supplemental Material:
None available

Document History:
09/21/18: IR 8221 (Draft)
06/05/19: IR 8221 (Final)

Topics

Security and Privacy

vulnerability management

Technologies

cloud & virtualization

Applications

forensics