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An Introduction to Kernel Patch Protection
Sunday, August 13th, 2006
There have been a lot of questions recently about a Windows technology called Kernel Patch 
Protection (sometimes referred to as PatchGuard) so I wanted to provide some context about the feature to help answer them. OS kernel design is a very specialized area of computer science that rarely receives a lot of public attention, so it’s understandable that there are a lot of questions out there. The purpose of this post is to give a basic primer on Kernel Patch Protection and why it is an important technology to increase the security and reliability of Windows-based PCs.
What is the Kernel?
The kernel is the lowest-level, most central part of a computer operating system and one of the first pieces of code to load when the machine starts up. The kernel is what enables the software of the machine to talk to the hardware and is responsible for basic OS housekeeping tasks such as memory management, launching programs and processes, and managing the data on the disk. All applications and even the graphical interface of Windows run on a layer on top of the kernel. The performance, reliability, and security of the entire computer depend on the integrity of the kernel. Windows Vista Security : An Introduction to Kernel Patch Protection
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