Patent ID: 8464251

Claim:
A method comprising: verifying, by a virtual machine monitor (VMM) executing on a platform, the integrity of an executive virtual machine (EVM), wherein the operation of verifying comprises: measuring an image of the EVM stored in a non-volatile storage medium; determining whether the image of the EVM in the non-volatile storage medium is valid, based on results of the measuring; in response to a determination that the image of the EVM in the non-volatile storage medium is valid, loading the EVM into a guest virtual machine to run in de-privileged mode; and before the EVM is assigned any privileges, measuring code and static data for the EVM loaded in memory to ensure runtime integrity of the EVM; receiving, at the VMM, a paging event for a second VM; redirecting the paging event for the second VM from the VMM to the EVM running in de-privileged mode; and in response to receiving the paging event at the EVM, updating, by the EVM, a page table for the second VM.