The trusted computing bases (TCBs)

Recently, the application of virtual-machine technology to integrate real-time systems into a single host has received significant attention and caused controversy. Drawing two examples from mixed-criticality systems, we demonstrate that current virtualization technology, which handles guest scheduling as a black box, is incompatible with this modern scheduling discipline. However, there is a simple solution by exporting sufficient information for the host scheduler to overcome this problem. We describe the problem, the modification required on the guest and show on the example of two practical real-time operating systems how flattening the hierarchical scheduling problem resolves the issue. We conclude by showing the limitations of our technique at the current state of our research.

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Virtualization, a well established technology in the desktop and server domain, is currently investigated and analyzed with respect to its potential within mobile devices. The paper argues that mobile devices, which are targeting a completely open setup (e.g. Linux based), are facing severe security challenges. Thus, virtualization will be discussed as an enabler for security in mobile devices. Virtualization approaches and elements are discussed in detail taking this use case and existing limitations of mobile embedded devices into account.

No abstract