Timer for hardware protection of virtual machine monitor runtime integrity watcher

A computer-implemented method in a computing system, comprising:

• loading a virtual machine monitor (VMM) runtime integrity watcher into a contiguous memory space of the computing system, wherein the contiguous memory space is protected by a set of one or more hardware range registers that protect the loaded VMM runtime integrity watcher from being modified;
• generating a timer event to invoke execution of the VMM runtime integrity watcher, wherein the generation of the timer event is based on a frequency band selected from a plurality of frequency bands according to a probability distribution of desired number of events per frequency band;
• responsive to the timer event, executing the VMM runtime integrity watcher;
• and
• performing, by the VMM runtime integrity watcher, an integrity check on a VMM during runtime of the VMM.

A system, comprising:

• a virtual machine monitor (VMM);
• and
• a processor including
• a set of one or more hardware range registers to protect a contiguous memory space that is to store a VMM runtime integrity watcher, wherein the set of hardware range registers are to protect the VMM runtime integrity watcher from being modified when loaded into the contiguous memory space;
• and
• a timer to generate a timer event based on a frequency band selected from a plurality of frequency bands according to a probability distribution of desired number of events per frequency band;
• the VMM runtime integrity watcher to be invoked based on the timer event to perform an integrity check on a VMM during runtime of the VMM.