Setup

Cloning the sources

First let’s make sure that we have the repository, on the right branches.

If you haven’t cloned KVM-VMI yet, use the following command:

$ git clone https://github.com/KVM-VMI/kvm-vmi.git --recursive

$ cd kvm-vmi
$ git checkout master
$ git submodule update

This setup will help you configure 3 components:

  • KVM

  • QEMU

  • LibVMI

Option 1: Vagrant - Virtual Machine based setup

This guide will help you setup a KVM-VMI development environment, contained in a virtual machine, on KVM.

vagrant_setup

Vagrant is a tool that helps create reproductible dev environment. A Vagrant setup is available for KVM-VMI, and it will configure and install all the components as well as a test virtual machine for you.

Go to kvm-vmi/vagrant and follow the instructions there.

Otherwise, keep reading

Option 2: Bare-metal setup

This guide will help you setup KVM-VMI directly on your system.

bare_setup

KVM

You will have to compile and install an entire kernel. It is not possible to compile the KVM modules using an “out-of-tree” build.

First we need to install the kernel build dependencies

$ sudo apt-get install bc fakeroot flex bison libelf-dev libssl-dev ncurses-dev

Let’s configure the kernel

$ cd kvm-vmi/kvm
$ make olddefconfig
$ make menuconfig

Apply the following configuration:

CONFIG_KVM=m
CONFIG_KVM_INTEL=m
CONFIG_KVM_AMD=m
CONFIG_KSM=n
CONFIG_REMOTE_MAPPING=y
CONFIG_KVM_INTROSPECTION=y

Build and install the kernel

$ make -j4 bzImage
$ make -j4 modules
$ sudo make modules_install
$ sudo make install

Reboot. Run uname -a You should be on kernel 5.4.24-kvmi (kvmi v7)

QEMU

Dependencies

$ sudo apt-get install libpixman-1-dev pkg-config zlib1g-dev libglib2.0-dev dh-autoreconf libspice-server-dev

Configure, build and install QEMU

$ cd kvm-vmi/qemu
$ ./configure --target-list=x86_64-softmmu --enable-spice --prefix=/usr/local
$ make -j4
$ sudo make install

Your modified QEMU has been installed at /usr/local/bin/qemu-system-x86_64

Note: You might need to modify your Apparmor configuration to allow its execution.

Preparing a domain

The Virtual Machine should be available in libvirt. Modify the XML configuration as the following.

<domain type='kvm' xmlns:qemu='http://libvirt.org/schemas/domain/qemu/1.0'>
  <qemu:commandline>
      <qemu:arg value='-chardev'/>
      <qemu:arg value='socket,path=/tmp/introspector,id=chardev0,reconnect=10'/>
      <qemu:arg value='-object'/>
      <qemu:arg value='introspection,id=kvmi,chardev=chardev0'/>
  </qemu:commandline>
  ...
  <devices>
      <emulator>/usr/local/bin/qemu-system-x86_64</emulator>

Note that you need to add xmlns:qemu='http://libvirt.org/schemas/domain/qemu/1.0'.

Validate the new configuration and start the domain.

libkvmi

libkvmi is a wrapper over the low-level KVMi API (ioctls) You should use this library to build your applications.

libkvmi

$ git clone https://github.com/bitdefender/libkvmi --branch kvmi-v6
$ ./bootstrap
$ ./configure
$ make
$ sudo make install

Libkvmi examples

Run the example provided by libkvmi: hookguest-libkvmi

$ cd libkvmi/examples
$ ./hookguest-libkvmi /tmp/introspector

Give it at least 10 seconds (waiting on QEMU to connect to the socket /tmp/introspector) and you should see some output ! :tada:

LibVMI

LibVMI is a VMI library providing a unified access on Xen and KVM, as well as a semantic layer.

Dependencies

$ sudo apt-get install build-essential gcc libtool cmake pkg-config check libglib2.0-dev libvirt-dev flex bison libjson-c-dev

Build and install

$ cd kvm-vmi/libvmi
$ mkdir build
$ cd build
$ cmake .. -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr/local -DENABLE_KVM=ON -DENABLE_XEN=OFF -DENABLE_BAREFLANK=OFF
$ make -j2
$ sudo make install

JSON profiles

TO use all the features of LibVMI, you need a Rekall/Volatility profile.

You can generate one like this:

  1. Run ./examples/vmi-win-guid and note the Kernel filename and PDB GUID fields.

  2. Use Volatility3 to extract the JSON profile

$ git clone https://github.com/volatilityfoundation/volatility3
$ cd volatility3
$ virtualenv -p python3 venv
$ source venv/bin/activate
(venv) $ pip install -e .
(venv) $ python volatility/framework/symbols/windows/pdbconv.py -o profile.json -p <Kernel filename> -g <PDB GUID>

Debug output

The debug output can be configured via CMake. The constants should be used from libvmi/debug.h

cd build 
cmake .. -DVMI_DEBUG='(VMI_DEBUG_KVM | VMI_DEBUG_DRIVER)'
make
sudo make install

Toggling the debug output is controlled by an environment variable: LIBVMI_DEBUG

$ LIBVMI_DEBUG=1 ./build/examples/vmi-process-list -n winxp -j /etc/libvmi/winxp-profile.json

Go to LibVMI for the rest of the documentation.