Technique for establishing secure communication between host and guest processes of a virtualization architecture

Abstract

Secure communication is established between a hyper-process of the virtualization layer (e.g., host) and an agent process in the guest operating system (e.g., guest) using a virtual communication device which, in an embodiment, is implemented as shared memory having two memory buffers. A guest-to-host buffer is used as a first message box configured to provide unidirectional communication from the agent to the virtualization layer and a host-to-guest buffer is used as a second message box configured to provide unidirectional communication from the virtualization layer to the agent. The buffers cooperate to transform the virtual device into a low-latency, high-bandwidth communication interface configured for bi-directional transfer of information between the agent process and the hyper-process of the virtualization layer, wherein the communication interface also includes a signaling (doorbell) mechanism configured to notify the processes that information is available for transfer over the interface.