Hypervisor Security and Vulnerabilities

Hypervisor security and vulnerabilities is a critical domain within cybersecurity that focuses on protecting the software, firmware, or hardware layer—the hypervisor—that creates and runs virtual machines (VMs). Since the hypervisor serves as the foundational platform for an entire virtualized infrastructure, it represents a single point of failure and a high-value target for attackers. A compromised hypervisor could grant an adversary complete control over all guest VMs, allowing for data theft, espionage, or widespread system disruption. Key vulnerabilities include "VM escape," where malicious code within a guest VM breaks out to access the host hypervisor or other VMs; inter-VM side-channel attacks that exploit shared hardware resources; and denial-of-service attacks where a rogue VM exhausts system resources, impacting all other tenants.