Windows Internals, Part 1

Chapter 1: Concepts and tools



Windows operating system versions

Foundation concepts and terms

Digging into Windows internals

Conclusion





Chapter 2: System architecture



Requirements and design goals

Operating system model

Architecture overview

Virtualization-based security architecture overview

Key system components

Conclusion





Chapter 3: Processes and jobs



Creating a process

Process internals

Protected processes

Minimal and Pico processes

Trustlets (secure processes)

Flow of CreateProcess

Terminating a process

Image loader

Jobs

Conclusion





Chapter 4: Threads



Creating threads

Thread internals

Examining thread activity

Thread scheduling

Group-based scheduling

Worker factories (thread pools)

Conclusion






Chapter 5: Memory management



Introduction to the memory manager

Services provided by the memory manager

Kernel-mode heaps (system memory pools)

Heap manager

Virtual address space layouts

Address translation

Page fault handling

Stacks

Virtual address descriptors

NUMA

Section objects

Working sets

Page frame number database

Physical memory limits

Memory compression

Memory partitions

Memory combining

Memory enclaves

Proactive memory management (SuperFetch)

Conclusion





Chapter 6: I/O system



I/O system components

Interrupt Request Levels and Deferred Procedure Calls

Device drivers

I/O processing

Driver Verifier

The Plug and Play manager

General driver loading and installation

The Windows Driver Foundation

The power manager

Conclusion





Chapter 7: Security



Security ratings

Security system components

Virtualization-based security

Protecting objects

The AuthZ API

Account rights and privileges

Access tokens of processes and threads

Security auditing

AppContainers

Logon

User Account Control and virtualization

Exploit mitigations

Application Identification

AppLocker

Software Restriction Policies

Kernel Patch Protection

PatchGuard

HyperGuard

Conclusion