International Business Machines Corporation

David Haikney

David Alan Gilbert

James William Walker

David N Mackintosh

Daniel Owen

David MacKintosh

Jonathan Jay Andrews

David Nigel Mackintosh

Miles Philip Howson

Jose Juan Palacios Perez

Shawn Patrick Mullen

Jose J P Perez

William Owen Lovett

Matthew Evans

Updating boot components in compliance with a chain of trust by loading a boot component update forming part of the chain of trust during a boot process in an execution environment. Boot component measurements are detected and stored as a revised set of attestation values for retrieval by an attestation system. Performing the boot component update upon determining a pass indication for the chain of trust including the boot component update.

Updating software

This invention relates to a method and apparatus for updating software. In particular this invention relates to a method, system and computer program for updating an operating system in a hypervisor comprising: determining a new version of a component of the operating system; installing the new component version; measuring an identifying characteristic of the component and making it available to an attestation system; notifying the attestation system that a component has been updated to a new version whereby, when the attestation system finds that the identifying characteristic of the new component does not match a pre-stored attestation value it is aware that a legitimate mis-match could have occurred. The installing of the new version of the component comprises: identifying an updater associated with new version of the component; measuring an identifying characteristic of the identified updater; loading and installing the new version of the component; and making both the identifying measurement of the updater and the new version of the component available to the attestation system.

A system, method, and computer program product for controlling migration of a VM operable on a first site and a second site. The system includes an identify component for identifying the second site; a request component for sending a consent request message to a software component, wherein the consent request message comprises at least one of an identifier of the VM and an identifier of the second site; a calculate component, operable on the software component and responsive to receiving the consent request message, for determining consent for the second site; a send component, responsive to a positive determination, for sending a consent message; and a migrate component, responsive to receiving the consent message, for migrating the VM from the first site to the second site.

Consent-based virtual machine migration

Virtual machine migration based on the consent by the second virtual machine running of the target host

Multi-component consent-based virtual machine migration

A technique for attesting a plurality of data processing systems includes generating a logical grouping for a data processing system. The logical grouping is associated with a rule that describes a condition that must be met in order for the data processing system to be considered trusted. A list of one or more children associated with the logical grouping is retrieved. The one or more children are attested to determine whether each of the one or more children is trusted. In response to the attesting, the rule is applied to determine whether the condition has been met in order for the data processing system to be considered trusted. A plurality of logical groupings is associated to determine whether an associated plurality of data processing systems can be considered trusted.

Techniques for attesting data processing systems

This invention relates to updating an operating system in a hypervisor comprising: determining a new version of a component of the operating system; installing the new component version; measuring an identifying characteristic of the component and making it available to an attestation system; notifying the attestation system that a component has been updated to a new version whereby, when the attestation system finds that the identifying characteristic of the new component does not match a pre-stored attestation value it is aware that a legitimate mis-match could have occurred. The installing of the new version of the component comprises: identifying an updater associated with new version of the component; measuring an identifying characteristic of the identified updater; loading and installing the new version of the component; and making both the identifying measurement of the updater and the new version of the component available to the attestation system.

Attesting a virtual machine that is migrating from a first environment to a second environment includes in response to initiation of migration of the virtual machine from the first environment to the second environment, accessing one or more stored trust values generated during the trusted boot of the virtual machine in the first environment, determining if the accessed trust values define a security setting sufficient for the second environment, and if the accessed trust values do not define a security setting sufficient for the second environment, performing a predetermined action in relation to the migration of the virtual machine to the second environment.

Virtual machine migration

An attestation technique is provided for processing attestation data associated with a plurality of data processing systems. A first data processing system is operable for receiving a request for attestation from a requester. In response to receiving the request, the first data processing system is further operable for retrieving a list of one or more children, wherein the one or more children include the second data processing system; retrieving and storing attestation data associated with each of the one or more children; retrieving and storing attestation data associated with the first data processing system; and sending to the requester a concatenated response containing the attestation data associated with the first data processing system and the child attestation data associated with the one or more children.

Processing attestation data associated with a plurality of data processing systems

An improved architecture for a program code conversion apparatus and method for generating intermediate representations for program code conversion. The program code conversion apparatus determines which types of IR nodes to generate in an intermediate representation (IR) of subject code () to be translated. Depending upon the particular subject and target computing environments involved in the conversion, the program code conversion apparatus utilizes either base nodes, complex nodes, polymorphic nodes, and architecture specific nodes, or some combination thereof, in generating the intermediate representation.

Architecture for generating intermediate representations for program code conversion

During program code conversion, such as in a dynamic binary translator, automatic code generation provides target codeexecutable by a target processor. Multiple instruction portsdisperse a group of instructions to functional unitsof the processor Disclosed is a mechanism of preparing an instruction groupusing a plurality of poolshaving a hierarchical structure-. Each pool represents a different overlapping subset of the issue ports. Placing an instructioninto a particular poolalso reduces vacancies in any one or more subsidiary pools in the hierarchy. In a preferred embodiment, a counter valueis associated with each poolto track vacancies. A valid instruction groupis formed by picking the placed instructionsfrom the pools. The instruction groups are generated accurately and automatically. Decoding errors and stalls are minimized or completely avoided.

Growing community of inventors

Manchester, United Kingdom

David Haikney