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nycerrrrrrrrrr 13 hours ago

Since some people seem to not be familiar with Joanna, she is a massively influential security researcher. IMO most famous for her "Blue pill" attacks on Vista and Xen: https://blackhat.com/presentations/bh-usa-06/BH-US-06-Rutkow..., https://invisiblethingslab.com/resources/bh08/part3.pdf. Her work demonstrated that hardware virtualization is not in fact the security panacea we wish it was, but that it too is vulnerable to attack just like any other layer of the stack. This revelation resulted in significant changes in the security world.

She is also famous for the Qubes OS project and coining the term "evil maid attack".

Kiboneu 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> "Blue pill" attacks on Vista and Xen [...] Her work demonstrated that hardware virtualization is not in fact the security panacea we wish it was, but that it too is vulnerable to attack just like any other layer of the stack.

Blue-pilling is a method for malware to hide from the OS by virtualizing it, not an attack on VMs. That's why it's called "blue pilling". I do agree though that VMs are not airtight and VM escapes have been demonstrated.

nycerrrrrrrrrr 10 hours ago | parent [-]

Yes, but when you blue-pill the hypervisor it becomes an attack on VMs. Her demonstrating the blue pill attack on Xen was really the "oh crap, these aren't as safe as we thought" moment.

an hour ago | parent | prev [-]
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