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John Hoopes
Technical Editor

48305726
PUBLISHED BY
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Elsevier, Inc.
30 Corporate Drive
Burlington, MA 01803
Virtualization for Security
Including Sandboxing, Disaster Recovery, High Availability, Forensic Analysis, and Honeypotting
Copyright © 2009 by Elsevier, Inc. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. Except as permitted
under the Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any
means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher, with the
exception that the program listings may be entered, stored, and executed in a computer system, but they may not be
reproduced for publication.
Printed in the United States of America
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0
ISBN 13: 978-1-59749-305-5
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Acquisitions Editor: Brian Sawyer Page Layout and Art: SPI
Technical Editor: John Hoopes Developmental Editor: Gary Byrne
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For information on rights, translations, and bulk sales, contact Matt Pedersen, Commercial Sales Director and Rights,
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hoopes, John.
Virtualization for security : including sandboxing, disaster recovery, high availability / John Hoopes.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-59749-305-5
1. Virtual computer systems. 2. Virtual storage (Computer sciences)--Security measures. 3. Database security.
I. Title.

and currently resides in Atlanta, Georgia.
Aaron wrote Chapter 2.
Paul Kenealy (BA [Hons] Russian and Soviet Studies, Red Hat Certified
Engineer) has just completed an MSc in information security at Royal
Holloway and is an information security incident response handler with
Barclays Bank in Canary Wharf, London. His specialities include security
pertaining to Linux network servers, intrusion detection, and secure
network architecture and design. Paul’s background includes positions
as a programmer with Logica, and he has designed and implemented
a number of VMware infrastructure systems for security monitoring and
incident analysis.
Paul contributed content to Chapter 5.
Wesley J. Noonan (VCP, CISA) is a virtualization, network, and security
domain expert at NetIQ, where he directly interfaces with customers to
meet and understand their needs and to integrate his experiences with
NetIQ’s development road map. With more than 14 years in the IT
industry, Wesley specializes in Windows-based networks and network
infrastructure security design and implementation.
vi
Contributing Authors
vii
Wesley is a continual industry contributor, having authored Hardening
Network Infrastructure, coauthored Hardening Network Security, The CISSP
Training Guide and Firewall Fundamentals, and acted as the technical editor
for Hacking Exposed: Cisco Networks. Previously, Wesley has presented at
VMworld 2008, TechMentor, and Syracuse VMUG; taught courses as a
Microsoft Certified Trainer; and developed and delivered his own Cisco
training curriculum. He has also contributed to top tier industry publications
such as the Financial Times, Redmond magazine, eWeek, Network World, and
TechTarget’s affiliates.

background includes extensive troubleshooting and problem solving.
His background also includes stints at Portland State University’s Office
on Information Technology and Vivendi Games, North America.
Fred holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration: information
systems from Portland State University. He now lives in Southern California
with his dog, Chance.
Fred contributed content to Chapter 3.
Andreas Turriff (MCSE, MCSA, CNE-5, CNE-6, MCNE) is a member
of the IT security team at Portland State University, working for the
CISO, Craig Schiller. Andreas integrates the tools for computer forensics
analysis on bootable media for internal use; his current main project is the
development of a Linux Live-DVD employing both binary and kernel-
level hardening schemes to ensure the integrity of the forensics tools
during analysis of malware. Andreas is currently in his senior year at
Portland State University, where he is working toward earning a bachelor’s
degree in computer science. He also has worked previously as a network
administrator for a variety of companies.
Andreas contributed content to Chapter 3.
Mario Vuksan is the director of research at Bit9, where he has helped
create the world’s largest collection of actionable intelligence about
software, the Bit9 Global Software Registry. He represents Bit9 at
industry events and currently works on the company’s next generation
of products and technologies. Before joining Bit9, Vuksan was program
manager and consulting engineer at Groove Networks (acquired by
Microsoft), working on Web-based solutions, P2P management, and
integration servers. Before joining Groove Networks, Vuksan developed
one of the first Web 2.0 applications at 1414c, a spin-off from PictureTel.
He holds a BA from Swarthmore College and an MA from Boston
University. In 2007, he spoke at CEIC, Black Hat, Defcon, AV Testing
Workshop, Virus Bulletin, and AVAR Conferences.

When not obsessed with corporate infrastructures, he spends his time with
his wife and three children.
David wrote Chapter 1.
This page intentionally left blank
xi
Contents
Chapter 1 An Introduction to Virtualization ..........................1
Introduction
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
What Is Virtualization?
............................................2
The History of Virtualization
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
The Atlas Computer
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
The M44/44X Project
.......................................4
CP/
CMS .................................................4
Other Time-Sharing Projects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Virtualization Explosion of the 1990s and Early 2000s
................6
The Answer: Virtualization Is…
...................................8
Why Virtualize?
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Decentralization versus Centralization
..............................9
True Tangible Benefits
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Proof of Concept Deployments
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Virtual Desktops
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Rapid Development, Test Lab, and Software
Configuration Management
................................36
xii Contents
Summary .....................................................38
Solutions Fast Track . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
Frequently Asked Questions
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
Chapter 2 Choosing the Right Solution for the Task
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Introduction
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
Issues and Considerations That Affect Virtualization Implementations
. . . . . . . . . 46
Performance
................................................47
Redundancy
................................................47
Operations
.................................................48
Backups
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
Security ...................................................48
Evolution
..................................................49
Discovery

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
I/O Virtualization
............................................58
Hardware Virtualization
........................................58
Summary .....................................................60
Solutions Fast Track . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Frequently Asked Questions
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
Chapter 3 Building a Sandbox
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
Introduction
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
Sandbox Background ............................................64
Contents xiii
The Visible Sandbox ..........................................65
cwsandbox.exe ............................................68
cwmonitor.dll . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
Existing Sandbox Implementations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
Describing CWSandbox ..........................................74
Creating a Live-DVD with VMware and CWSandbox ....................78
Setting Up Linux ............................................78
Setting Up VMware Server v1.05 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
Setting Up a Virtual Machine in VMware Server . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
Setting Up Windows XP Professional in the Virtual Machine ............81
Setting Up CWSandbox v2.x in Windows XP Professional . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
Configuring Linux and VMware Server for Live-DVD Creation ..........83
Updating Your Live-DVD
......................................85
Summary .....................................................86

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
Multiple Interfaces
.........................................98
Physical Hardware Access
.........................................99
Physical Disks
...............................................99
USB Devices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
Interfacing with the Host
........................................ 104
Cut and Paste
.............................................. 104
How to Install the VMware Tools in a Virtual Machine
................ 105
How to Install the Virtual Machine Additions in Virtual PC
. . . . . . . . . . . . 112
xiv Contents
Summary .................................................... 113
Solutions Fast Track . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
Frequently Asked Questions
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
Chapter 5 Honeypotting
........................................117
Introduction
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
Herding of Sheep .............................................. 118
Honeynets
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
Gen I
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120

Solutions Fast Track . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
Frequently Asked Questions
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
Note
....................................................... 143
Chapter 6 Malware Analysis
.....................................145
Introduction
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
Setting the Stage ............................................ 146
How Should Network Access Be Limited? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
Don’t Propagate It Yourself
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
The Researcher May Get Discovered
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
Create a “Victim” That Is as Close to Real as Possible
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
You Should Have a Variety of Content to Offer ..................... 148
Give It That Lived-in Look
.................................... 149
Making the Local Network More Real
........................... 149
Testing on VMware Workstation
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
Microsoft Virtual PC
......................................... 153
Contents xv
Looking for Effects of Malware .................................... 154
What Is the Malware’s Purpose?
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154

What Malicious Operations Are Performed?
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
Bot-Related Findings of Our Live Sandbox ........................... 181
Antivirtualization Techniques
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
Detecting You Are in a Virtual Environment
........................ 184
Virtualization Utilities
........................................ 184
VMware I/O Port
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184
Emulated Hardware Detection
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
Hardware Identifiers
....................................... 185
MAC Addresses
........................................ 185
Hard Drives
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
PCI Identifiers
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
Detecting You Are in a Hypervisor Environment
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
Summary .................................................... 188
Solutions Fast Track . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
Frequently Asked Questions
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
Chapter 7 Application Testing
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
Introduction

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
Choosing an Effective Starting Point ................................ 214
Using a Clean Slate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
Reducing Startup Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
Setting Up the Debugging Tools ................................ 215
Preparing to Take Input
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
Preparing for External Interaction
.................................. 218
Taking the Snapshot ......................................... 218
Executing the Test
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
Scripting Snapshot Startup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
Interacting with the Application
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220
Selecting Test Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
Checking for Exceptions
...................................... 222
Saving the Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
Running Concurrent Tests
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
Summary .................................................... 225
Solutions Fast Track . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
Frequently Asked Questions
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
Chapter 9 Forensic Analysis
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229
Introduction
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230
Preparing Your Forensic Environment

Chapter 10 Disaster Recovery
....................................255
Introduction
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256
Disaster Recovery in a Virtual Environment
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256
Simplifying Backup and Recovery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
File Level Backup and Restore
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
System-Level Backup and Restore ............................... 258
Shared Storage Backup and Restore . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259
Allowing Greater Variation in Hardware Restoration
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
Different Number of Servers ................................... 262
Using Virtualization for Recovery of Physical Systems .............. 262
Using Virtualization for Recovery of
Virtual Systems ............... 263
Recovering from Hardware Failures
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
Redistributing the Data Center
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
Summary .................................................... 267
Solutions Fast Track . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268
Frequently Asked Questions
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269
Chapter 11 High Availability: Reset to Good
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271
Introduction
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272
Understanding High Availability

Chapter 12 Best of Both Worlds: Dual Booting
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289
Introduction
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290
How to Set Up Linux to Run Both Natively and Virtually . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290
Creating a Partition for Linux on an Existing Drive
.................. 291
Setting Up Dual Hardware Profiles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295
Issues with Running Windows Both Natively and Virtualized
.............. 296
Precautions When Running an Operating System
on Both Physical and Virtualized Platforms
...................... 296
Booting a Suspended Partition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296
Deleting the Suspended State ................................ 297
Changing Hardware Configurations Can Affect
Your Software ......................................... 297
Summary .................................................... 299
Solutions Fast Track . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299
Frequently Asked Questions
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 300
Chapter 13 Protection in Untrusted Environments
...................301
Introduction
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 302
Meaningful Uses of Virtualization in Untrusted Environments
. . . . . . . . . . 302
Levels of Malware Analysis Paranoia
.............................. 308
Using Virtual Machines to Segregate Data ............................ 316

. . . . . . . . . 332
Default Platforms
......................................... 332
Scanning Servers in a Virtual Environment ......................... 333
Setting Up Target Servers ........................................ 334
Very “Open” Boxes for Demonstrating during Class
.................. 335
Suggested Vulnerabilities for Windows .......................... 335
Suggested Vulnerabilities for Linux . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 336
Suggested Vulnerabilities for Application Vulnerability Testing ......... 336
Creating the Capture-the-Flag Scenario . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339
Harder Targets
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339
Snapshots Saved Us . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 340
Require Research to Accomplish the Task
....................... 341
Introduce Firewalls
........................................ 341
Multiple Servers Requiring Chained Attacks ..................... 341
Adding Some Realism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 342
Loose Points for Damaging the Environment
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 342
Demonstrate What the Attack Looks Like on IDS ................. 343
Out Brief
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 343
Cleaning up Afterward
.......................................... 343
Saving Your Back .............................................. 344
Summary .................................................... 345
Solutions Fast Track . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345

Virtualization is one of those buzz words that has been gaining immense popularity
with IT professionals and executives alike. Promising to reduce the ever-growing
infrastructure inside current data center implementations, virtualization technologies
have cropped up from dozens of software and hardware companies. But what exactly
is it? Is it right for everyone? And how can it benefit your organization?
Virtualization has actually been around more than three decades. Once only
accessible by the large, rich, and prosperous enterprise, virtualization technologies
are now available in every aspect of computing, including hardware, software, and
communications, for a nominal cost. In many cases, the technology is freely available
(thanks to open-source initiatives) or included for the price of products such as
operating system software or storage hardware.
Well suited for most inline business applications, virtualization technologies have
gained in popularity and are in widespread use for all but the most demanding
workloads. Understanding the technology and the workloads to be run in a virtual-
ized environment is key to every administrator and systems architect who wishes to
deliver the benefits of virtualization to their organization or customers.
This chapter will introduce you to the core concepts of server, storage, and
network virtualization as a foundation for learning more about Xen. This chapter
will also illustrate the potential benefits of virtualization to any organization.
What Is Virtualization?
So what exactly is virtualization? Today, that question has many answers. Different
manufacturers and independent software vendors coined that phrase to categorize
their products as tools to help companies establish virtualized infrastructures. Those
claims are not false, as long as their products accomplish some of the following key
points (which are the objectives of any virtualization technology):
Add a layer of abstraction between the applications and the hardware
■
Enable a reduction in costs and complexity
■
Provide the isolation of computer resources for improved reliability and security

Manchester University and funded by Ferranti Limited, the Atlas was the fastest
computer of its time. The speed it enjoyed was partially due to a separation of oper-
ating system processes in a component called the supervisor and the component
responsible for executing user programs. The supervisor managed key resources, such
as the computer’s processing time, and was passed special instructions, or extracodes,
to help it provision and manage the computing environment for the user program’s
instructions. In essence, this was the birth of the hypervisor, or virtual machine
monitor.
In addition, Atlas introduced the concept of virtual memory, called one-level
store, and paging techniques for the system memory. This core store was also logically
separated from the store used by user programs, although the two were integrated.
In many ways, this was the first step towards creating a layer of abstraction that all
virtualization technologies have in common.
4 Chapter1•AnIntroductiontoVirtualization
The M44/44X Project
Determined to maintain its title as the supreme innovator of computers, and motivated
by the competitive atmosphere that existed, IBM answered back with the M44/44X
Project. Nested at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown, New York,
the project created a similar architecture to that of the Atlas computer. This architecture
was first to coin the term virtual machines and became IBM’s contribution to the
emerging time-sharing system concepts. The main machine was an IBM 7044 (M44)
scientific computer and several simulated 7044 virtual machines, or 44Xs, using both
hardware and software, virtual memory, and multi-programming, respectively.
Unlike later implementations of time-sharing systems, M44/44X virtual machines
did not implement a complete simulation of the underlying hardware. Instead,
it fostered the notion that virtual machines were as efficient as more conventional
approaches. To nail that notion, IBM successfully released successors of the M44/44X
project that showed this idea was not only true, but could lead to a successful
approach to computing.
CP/CMS

a component called the virtual machine monitor (VMM) running on the real
hardware. Each virtual machine was able to run a unique installation of IBM’s
operating system stably and with great performance.
Other Time-Sharing Projects
IBM’s CTSS and CP/CMS efforts were not alone, although they were the most
influential in the history of virtualization. As time sharing became widely accepted
and recognized as an effective way to make early mainframes more affordable, other
companies joined the time-sharing fray. Like IBM, those companies needed plenty of
capital to fund the research and hardware investment needed to aggressively pursue
time-sharing operating systems as the platform for running their programs and
computations. Some other projects that jumped onto the bandwagon included
■
Livermore Time-Sharing System (LTSS) Developed by the Lawrence
Livermore Laboratory in the late 1960s as the operating system for the
Control Data CDC 7600 supercomputers. The CDC 7600 running LTSS
took over the title of the world’s fastest computer, trumping on the Atlas
computer, which suffered from a form of trashing due to inefficiencies in
its implementation of virtual memory.