A Secret-Free Hypervisor - Rethinking Isolation in the Age of Speculative Vulnerabilities

Explore a groundbreaking approach to hypervisor security in this 17-minute IEEE conference talk. Delve into the root causes of speculative vulnerabilities and learn how to rethink hypervisor isolation through a secret-free design. Discover the allow-list approach and how hypervisors can maintain secret isolation. Examine the challenges faced and evaluate the performance of Secret-Free Xen. Gain valuable insights on protecting against unknown attacks and understand the implications for future hypervisor designs in the age of speculative vulnerabilities.

Intro
The root cause
Rethinking hypervisor isolation Secrets: guest memory, registers and their copies
An allow-list approach
Hypervisor maintains secret isolation
Challenges
Evaluation of Secret-Free Xen
Insights
Against unknown attacks
Conclusions