Microsoft exec rebuts hypervisor security claims
Senior Microsoft security strategist Steve Riley has used the vendor's TechEd conference in Sydney to rebut claims by a Polish researcher that Microsoft's hypervisor software could be maliciously replaced on PCs without administrators knowing.
The hypervisor is the portion of Microsoft's operating system that controls virtual operating system instances. Researcher Joanna Rutkowska has caused a debate over the several years by developing a hypervisor rootkit she claims could go undetected on a PC.
"Her insistence is that you can replace the hypervisor without anybody knowing... Our assertion is that this is incorrect," Riley told the audience. "First of all, to do these attacks you need to become administrator at the root. So that's going to be, on an appropriately configured machine, an exceedingly difficult thing to happen."
