Saturday, October 11, 2008
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Detect Rootkits
The Department of Computer Science at Dartmouth College
announces a new technical report:

Detecting kernel rootkits

Dartmouth Technical Report TR2008-627

        Ashwin Ramaswamy

Date: September 2008


Abstract:
 Kernel rootkits are a special category of malware that are deployed directly in the
 kernel and hence have unmitigated reign over the functionalities of the kernel itself.
 We seek to detect such rootkits that are deployed in the real world by first observing
 how the majority of kernel rootkits operate. To this end, comparable to how rootkits
 function in the real world, we write our own kernel rootkit that manipulates the network
 driver, thus giving us control over all packets sent into the network.
 We then implement a mechanism to thwart the attacks of such rootkits by noticing
 that a large number of the rootkits deployed today rely heavily on the redirection of
 function pointers within the kernel. By overwriting the desired function pointer to its
 own function, a rootkit can perform a proverbial man-in-the-middle attack.
 Our goal is not just the detection of kernel rootkits, but also to levy as little an
 impact on system performance as possible. Hence our technique is to leverage existing
 kernel functionalities (in the case of Linux) such as kprobes to identify potential attack
 scenarios from within the sytem rather than from outside it (such as a VMM). We hope
 to introduce real-world security in devices where performance and resource constraints
 are tantamount to security considerations.

Note:
 M.S. Thesis Proposal. Advisor: Sean W. Smith

To obtain an electronic copy, point your web browser to the URL
   <http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/reports/abstracts/TR2008-627/>.

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