NumChecker

Abstract

This paper presents NumChecker, a new Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM) based framework to detect control-flow modifying kernel rootkits in a guest Virtual Machine (VM). NumChecker detects malicious modifications to a system call in the guest VM by checking the number of certain hardware events that occur during the system call's execution. To automatically count these events, NumChecker leverages the Hardware Performance Counters (HPCs), which exist in most modern processors. By using HPCs, the checking cost is significantly reduced and the tamper-resistance is enhanced. We implement a prototype of NumChecker on Linux with the Kernelbased Virtual Machine (KVM). Our evaluation demonstrates its practicality and effectiveness.