Hypervisor Security and Vulnerabilities

3.

Major Hypervisor Vulnerabilities and Exploitation Techniques

3.1.

3.1.1.

Definition and Impact

3.1.1.1.

Consequences of VM Escape

3.1.1.2.

Real-World Examples

3.1.2.

Attack Flow from Guest to Host

3.1.2.1.

Exploiting Hypervisor Bugs from Guest

3.1.2.2.

Privilege Escalation to Host Level

3.1.3.

Vulnerabilities in Virtual Devices

3.1.3.1.

Device Emulation Bugs

3.1.3.2.

Insecure Device Configuration

3.1.4.

Exploiting Hypervisor API Flaws

3.1.4.1.

Insecure API Endpoints

3.1.4.2.

Insufficient Input Validation

3.1.5.

Memory Corruption Vulnerabilities

3.1.5.1.

Buffer Overflows

3.1.5.2.

Use-After-Free Bugs

3.1.5.3.

Heap Corruption

3.1.5.4.

Stack Corruption

3.2.

Inter-VM Attacks

3.2.1.

Bypassing VM Isolation

3.2.1.1.

Exploiting Shared Resources

3.2.1.2.

Misconfigured Isolation Policies

3.2.2.

Information Leakage between VMs

3.2.2.1.

Data Remanence in Memory

3.2.2.2.

Side-Channel Data Leakage

3.2.3.

Direct VM-to-VM Exploitation

3.2.3.1.

Exploiting Shared Virtual Devices

3.2.3.2.

Attacks via Virtual Network Interfaces

3.3.

Denial of Service Attacks

3.3.1.

Resource Starvation

3.3.1.1.

3.3.1.1.1.

Infinite Loop Attacks

3.3.1.1.2.

Malicious Workload Injection

3.3.1.2.

Memory Exhaustion

3.3.1.2.1.

Overcommitting Memory

3.3.1.2.2.

Exploiting Balloon Drivers

3.3.1.3.

I/O Bandwidth Saturation

3.3.1.3.1.

Flooding Virtual Network Interfaces

3.3.1.3.2.

Storage I/O Overload

3.3.2.

Architectural DoS

3.3.2.1.

Exploiting Shared Resource Contention

3.3.2.1.1.

Lock Contention Attacks

3.3.2.1.2.

Starvation of Critical Services

3.3.2.2.

Crashing the Hypervisor

3.3.2.2.1.

Triggering Kernel Panics

3.3.2.2.2.

Exploiting Unhandled Exceptions

3.4.

Management Plane Compromise

3.4.1.

Unauthorized Access to Management Console

3.4.1.1.

Weak Authentication Mechanisms

3.4.1.2.

Credential Theft and Phishing

3.4.2.

Exploitation of Management Agents

3.4.2.1.

Agent Vulnerabilities

3.4.2.2.

Privilege Escalation via Agents

3.4.3.

Man-in-the-Middle Attacks on Management Traffic

3.4.3.1.

Intercepting Unencrypted Traffic

3.4.3.2.

Session Hijacking

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4. Side-Channel Attacks in Virtualized Environments