Mandiant, Inc.
Late load technique for deploying a virtualization layer underneath a running operating system

Abstract:

A technique deploys a virtualization layer underneath an operating system executing on a node of a network environment to enable the virtualization layer to control the operating system is described. One or more executables (binaries) for the virtualization layer may be included in a kernel module loaded in memory of the node with a first privilege level (e.g., highest privilege level) needed to control the guest operating system. The kernel module may be configured to suspend the guest operating system and one or more hardware resources to a quiescent state. Furthermore, the kernel module is configured to (i) capture and save states of the hardware resource(s) and (ii) bootstrap the virtualization layer to create a virtual machine with an initial state that corresponds to a state of the system prior to deployment of the virtualization layer.