Building an Internet Cleanroom from Virtual Machines

The vision for the Internet Cleanroom is to make the operating system a single-use machine. Machines are created on demand when needed for an application, and then disposed of after use. Each machine created is pristine (original build with vendor patches) so the application runs in an unpolluted environment. Machines that are infected or compromised during use are disposed of and therefore foreign threats eliminated. The key technology enabler used in this project is machine virtualization. The mechanics of the virtualization are transparent to user. User experience should be similar to current desktop computing experience. Phase I demonstrated the feasibility of this approach. Phase II will develop a robust prototype for use in pilot evaluations in DoD facilities.