Automated and Safe Vulnerability Assessment

As the number of system vulnerabilities multiplies in recent years, vulnerability assessment has emerged as a powerful system security administration tool that can identify vulnerabilities in existing systems before they are exploited. Although there are many commercial vulnerability assessment tools in the market, none of them can formally guarantee that the assessment process never compromises the computer systems being tested. This paper proposes a featherweight virtual machine (FVM) technology to address the safety issue associated with vulnerability testing. Compared with other virtual machine technologies, FVM is designed to facilitate sharing between virtual machines but still provides strong protection between them. The FVM technology allows a vulnerability assessment tool to test an exact replica of a production-mode network service, including both hardware and system software components, while guaranteeing that the production-mode network service is fully isolated from the t...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2005
• Where: ACSAC
• Authors: Fanglu Guo, Yang Yu, Tzi-cker Chiueh
• Keywords: ACSAC 2005, Security Privacy, Virtual Machine, Vulnerability Assessment, Vulnerability Assessment Tool