Success for Daria Pietraszko, this year’s graduate in Cybersecurity from the Faculty of Information and Communication Technology (FICT). Her master’s thesis, titled “Development of a Virtual Machine Introspection-Based Solution for Detecting Rootkit Malware,” was awarded in the National Inter-University Young Masters Competition in the category of Best Work in the Field of Cybersecurity. Congratulations!

Gain an advantage

Daria Pietraszko works with malware both professionally and as a hobby. In her opinion, rootkits are its most advanced form.

– Basic solutions operate at best within the kernel space, just like typical rootkits, so in the best-case scenario, we have an equal chance against this malware. It's a constant fight between detection and concealment techniques. And what if we tried to create a detection mechanism that actually has an advantage? – asks our graduate.

She tried to find an answer in her master's thesis. She decided to use virtual machine introspection, a technique that allows the state of a virtualised operating system to be analysed from outside the machine itself.

– We can do this using the information provided by the hypervisor. We have the ability to inspect the memory or the processor registers. The monitoring process takes place outside the operating system, so the rootkit cannot access it. The detection mechanism using introspection gives us an advantage over the rootkit – continues Daria Pietraszko.

Daria plans to pursue doctoral studies at our faculty, during which she will continue to develop her master’s thesis — the work that was awarded in the National Inter-University Young Masters Competition in the category of Best Work in the Field of Cybersecurity.

Young Masters

The National, Inter-University Young Masters Competition is organised by the Programme Council of the ICT Forum. Its contestants may include individuals who, in the academic year in which the next edition of the competition was announced, were students of first, second, and third cycle studies.

This year’s edition took place as part of the 31st Teleinformatics Forum titled “State Information System – New Goals and Challenges” held on 2–3 October. On the first day, the nominated works were presented, and on the second day, the results were announced.

The competition entries could be prepared independently or under the supervision of academic advisors. The supervisor of the awarded FICT graduate is Dr. Wojciech Wodo from the Department of Fundamentals of Computer Science.