Key Topics - VRIG-Ritsec/Resources GitHub Wiki

Kernel/Userspace/Operating Systems

Operating Systems are the central piece of what makes your computer tick. Operating Systems can roughly be split into 2 major components: kernel space and user space. Kernel space is reserved for the kernel, kernel extensions and device drivers while user space runs your applications such as games and your web browser. The kernel is the underlying software that interfaces between your hardware and processes and manages system resources.

x86-64

x86 is a popular computer architecture for CPUs which supports a wide range of instructions that can perform various tasks. x86_64 is an extension on top of x86 which introduces 64-bit support while x86 is traditionally 32-bit. Some popular x86 processors include Intel Core processors and AMD Ryzen processors. C, C++ and x86 assembly are commonly used to program x86.

Hypervisors/Virtual Machine Monitors

A hypervisor or virtual machine monitor (VMM) acts as a host to guest software, with full control of the host machine's processor(s) and other hardware. A virtual machine (VM) is a guest software environment consisting of an operating system and applications. The VM behaves as if it was running directly on a platform without a VMM but with reduced privileges so the VMM can maintain control of the host machine's resources.

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KVM

Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) is an open source virtualization solution for Linux running x86 hardware with support for virtualization (Intel VT or AMD-V). KVM consists of one kernel module, kvm.ko, that provides the core virtualization infrastructure and a processor specific kernel module, kvm-intel.ko or kvm-amd.ko.

Fuzzing

Fuzzing is an automated software testing technique based on sending a program random/mutated input and looking for exceptions/crashes. We'll be using LibAFL to fuzz KVM.

SSH

SSH stands for secure shell and can be used to gain shell access to a remote machine running an ssh server. The basic syntax is: ssh user@host. Check out the ssh man pages for more information!