Technique for protecting guest processes using a layered virtualization architecture

Abstract

A technique protects guest processes of a guest operating system kernel using a virtualization layer of a virtualization architecture executing on a node of a network environment. The virtualization layer may include a user mode portion having hyper-processes and a kernel portion having an micro-hypervisor that cooperate to virtualize the guest operating system kernel within a virtual machine and to make hardware resources of the node available for use by the guest operating system kernel, either as pass-through resources, emulated resources, or a combination thereof. Illustratively, the micro-hypervisor may cooperate with the hyper-processes of the virtualization layer to protect the guest processes against attack by one or more exploits that may employ malware. To that end, the guest process protection technique enables the micro-hypervisor and/or hyper-processes of the virtualization layer to determine (i) when the guest operating system switches to a guest process for execution, (ii) an identity of the guest process, and (iii) a protection policy to be associated with the guest process identity.