ZenithHV: A Minimal and Undetectable Hypervisor

📌 Overview

ZenithHV is a lightweight, bare-metal hypervisor designed to be as undetectable and minimal as possible while allowing users to write and load custom modules to supervise guest systems. It fully passes through hardware, making it nearly invisible to the guest OS while still enabling powerful debugging and monitoring capabilities. ZenithHV is built in C, uses the Limine bootloader, and is designed to support OVMF for UEFI booting. It also aims to implement nested virtualization for running hypervisors inside guests.

🚀 Features

✔ Minimal Footprint – No unnecessary features, just a thin passthrough layer.

✔ Undetectable – Aims to be invisible to guests while still providing control.

✔ Full Hardware Passthrough – Guests interact with real hardware with minimal interference.

✔ Modular Supervision – Loadable modules allow flexible guest supervision.

✔ Nested Virtualization Support – Run hypervisors inside the guest OS and support hypervisor based security.

🏗 Building & Running

🔧 Dependencies

• GCC (with cross-compilation support for x86_64 ELF)
• Git (for cloning the limine repository)
• OVMF (for UEFI booting)
• NASM (for assembling low-level code)
• Make (for automated builds)
• QEMU (for runing virtualised)
• MTools and gptfdisk (for creating the image)

🛠 Building ZenithHV

1️⃣ Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/notbonzo-com/ZenithHV.git
cd ZenithHV

2️⃣ Build the hypervisor:

make; make reset

🖥 Running in QEMU

🏴 Legacy BIOS Mode

Run with BIOS emulation (faster testing):

make run

🌍 UEFI Mode (OVMF)

Run with OVMF UEFI firmware:

qemu-system-x86_64 -cpu host -smp 4 -m 512M -enable-kvm -drive file=build/image.hdd,format=raw -debugcon stdio -bios /usr/share/ovmf/OVMF.fd

🛠 Debugging with GDB

To attach GDB to the hypervisor: 1️⃣ Start QEMU with debugging enabled:

qemu-system-x86_64 -cpu host -smp 4 -m 512M -enable-kvm -drive file=build/image.hdd,format=raw -serial stdio -s -S

2️⃣ In another terminal, connect GDB:

gdb build/kernel.bin

3️⃣ Attach to QEMU:

target remote :1234

Now you can set breakpoints and step through execution.

🔍 Current Issues

❌ None of the hypervisor featrues are implemented. ❌ Nested Virtualization not yet implemented (planned feature).

📜 License

ZenithHV is licensed under the MIT License. See LICENSE for details.

🤝 Contributing to ZenithHV

Thank you for your interest in contributing to ZenithHV! 🎉 We welcome contributions of all kinds, including code, documentation, bug reports, feature requests, and testing.

📌 How to Contribute

🔍 Finding Issues

Check the Issues tab for open issues and feature requests. If you have an idea, feel free to open a new issue before implementing it.

🔀 Creating a New Branch

Always work on a new branch instead of main:

git checkout -b my-name-my-feature

✅ Writing Code

• Follow C23 coding style.
• Keep the hypervisor minimal & undetectable.
• Use meaningful commit messages.
• Test your code in QEMU before submitting.

🔃 Submitting a Pull Request (PR)

1. Commit your changes
2. Push your branch
3. Open a Pull Request on GitHub.

📝 Reporting Bugs

If you encounter a bug, please open an issue and include:

• A detailed description of the problem.
• Steps to reproduce the issue.
• Any error messages or logs.
• Your host system setup (Linux distro, CPU, QEMU version).

💡 Suggesting Features

Want a new feature? Open an issue with:

• A clear explanation of the feature.
• How it benefits ZenithHV.
• Any technical considerations.

📜 License

By contributing, you agree that your code will be released under the MIT License.