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Application-Level Virtualization For Windows

Thursday, 13 July 2006 by Michel Roth

An interview with Eyal Dotan at SecurityFocus.com, who has developed application-level virtualization software (Bufferzone) that protects Windows hosts from malware. The interview discusses the architecture, advantages of it's design, performance, and how this method could be applied to servers running Windows or be ported to other OSes.

Bufferzone allows users to run unknown, dangerous programs and malware without harming the system.

The general idea is that programs running in our virtual Bufferzone can see the hard-disk files and registry, but whatever they write back is virtualized: redirected elsewhere ("write" includes: rename, create, delete, or modify). For example, if a program running in BZ modifies the registry, then these changes will only be seen by programs running in BZ. Windows itself will not see any modification.

Trustware is the company behind BufferZone. BufferZone is a family of application-level security products that utilize virtualization software to secure personal computers. Trustware has recently been nominated one of the 10 hot start-ups of 2006 by Microsoft.

Read it all here.