[cap-talk] Virtual Machine Based Rootkits

[Norman Hardy]

On Aug 4, 2006, at 3:15 PM, David Mercer wrote:

> On 8/4/06, Jed at Webstart <donnelley1 at webstart.com> wrote:
>> Perhaps Norm remembers this technical point.  I seem to recall that
>> some of the IBM 370 computers came with virtual machine assist that
>> deliberately did provide for recursive virtualizability.  Do you  
>> recall
>> that Norm?  Does anyone know if there are still VM370 systems
>> running VMMs?
>>
>> --Jed http://www.webstart.com/jed/
>
> See page 14, upper right column of: http://www.vm.ibm.com/library/ 
> zvmref08.pdf
> VM is still recursively hostable!

Thanks for finding that link.
As David Hopwood says, there is much variability in what features a  
real system has and I suspect that higher level virtual zSeries  
machines become simpler on this axis.
There is amazing smoke and mirrors under the cover in the zSeries.
Depending on the model it bottoms out in an x86 running code from  
Fundamental software <http://www.funsoft.com/>,
A power PC with special features, or an honest to goodness 64 bit  
implementation of the greatly enhanced 370 instruction set.

>
> -David Mercer
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