My paper on trusted computing to secure virtualization is now live at Microsoft website. You can find it here: http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/?id=157213 PS: I do not work at Microsoft anymore.
Archive for the ‘Virtualisation’ Category
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Workstation 6.5 and ACE 2.5 beta are out and available for download. The most interesting feature added for me is the Support for Smart Cards and Smart Card Readers. Also an interesting new feature is the “Unity” that integrates applications on guest to be controlled from the host. Not sure at the moment how will [...]
Portable applications are useful. You do not need to install them, carry them along with all the settings, forget about platforms, configurations, settings and most important liscencing. There are a number of techniques to make portable apps. Thinstall uses an Application Virtualization Technique to achive that purpose. VMWare recently acquired it and the application is [...]
I recently downloaded the Windows Server 2008 RC0 to play around with the new Hypervisor layer Microsoft introduced with the upcoming server operating system. Initially perceived as a “feature” of the operating system itself, which now has come out as a completely separate product (an addon) called HyperV (with a strange pricing of 28 USD [...]
A talk on Open Source on Software Freedom Day
Posted: October 15, 2007 in Codes & Utilities, Programming, Random Writings, Reverse Engineering, Security, Security Testing, Virtualisation, Web SecurityThe world celebrated the Software Freedom Day on 15th September 2007. We had some 100+ countries and more than 300 groups covering the free software world in different form of activities, presentations and events. The webmasters of FAST-NU Karachi also organized an event and talk series on the day and I felt really honored and [...]
Recording the Runtime State of a VM
Posted: February 17, 2007 in Reverse Engineering, Security, Security Testing, VirtualisationAs VMWare 6 Goes into beta 3, the most awaited feature and a tester dream comes to reality. To capture, record and replay EVERYTHING that happens to a VM. This is not a movie recording, but more of a runtime execution and state recording. You can play back a recorded instance (say a list of [...]
My favourite virtualisation product VMWare is now in the sixth generation with its public beta available for testing in the holiday season. The product is continously being transformed for being the preferred tool for software engineers and security reasearchers due to its noticable features for ease of development, debugging and tracing. Integration with Visual Studio [...]
OC Defcon Presentation on Malware Detection
Posted: August 7, 2006 in Malware, Reverse Engineering, Security, VirtualisationOffensive Computing just released their presentation slides, videos and sample codes from their Defcon 14 talk. There paper Further Down the VM Spiral discusses several new tools and describes some new VM detection techniques including a generic virtual machine detector. This VM detector tries a variety of methods including the new machine status word (MSW) [...]
From time to time it is handy to be able to detect whether your binary / script / program / software is running under a virtual machine and / or a similar controlled environment. For example: You have a network of nodes where you want your binary to run but you want it to behave [...]
Using Virtual Snapshots & Clones to Streamline Development & Testing
Posted: March 10, 2006 in Programming, VirtualisationLast week i conducted an inhouse session and a workshop titled “Using Virtual Snapshots & Clones to Streamline Development & Testing” with the development team at my workplace. The session discussed the following topics: Advanced tips and tricks of using VMWare focusing on NDC Development & Testing Environment simulator setups. Setting up different NDC Development [...]
