Vmware, Inc.

Jesse Pool

David A Dunn

Adrian Drzewiecki

Abhishek Srivastava

Petr Vandrovec

Samyuktha Subramanian

Viswesh Narayanan

A method for protecting an OS disk of a computing device without block encrypting the OS disk. The method identifies one or more files that store configuration data associated with OS binaries executed on the computing device. The method encrypts the configuration data stored in the one or more files using an encryption key and seals the encryption key to a TPM of the computing device. The method then boots the computing device by attempting to unseal the encryption key by authenticating one or more of the OS binaries with the TPM. When authenticating the one or more of the OS binaries is successful, the method completes boot of the computing device by decrypting the configuration data using the encryption key. If authentication of the one or more of the OS binaries is not successful, however, the method aborts boot of the computing device.

Protecting an entire system disk by encrypting data stored in a portion of the system disk

An example method of secure attestation of a workload deployed in a virtualized computing system is described. The virtualized computing system includes a host cluster and a virtualization management server, the host cluster having hosts and a virtualization layer executing on hardware platforms of the hosts. The method includes storing, in a trust authority, a pre-defined attestation report for a workload executing in a virtual machine (VM) managed by the virtualization layer, the pre-defined attestation report including a hash of at least a portion of an image of the VM; receiving, at the trust authority from a security module of a host in which the VM executes, an attestation report generated by measuring memory of the VM; comparing the attestation report with the pre-defined attestation report; and generating an indication of validity for the workload based on a result of the comparison.

Secure storage of workload attestation reports in a virtualized and clustered computer system

In one set of embodiments, confidential data needed by a workload component running within a worker VM can be placed on an encrypted virtual disk that is attached to the worker VM and hardware-based attestation can be used to validate the worker VM's software and isolate its guest memory from its hypervisor. Upon successful completion of this attestation process, a data decryption key can be delivered to the worker VM via a secure channel established via the attestation, such that the hypervisor cannot read or alter the key. The worker VM can then decrypt the contents of the encrypted virtual disk using the data decryption key, thereby granting the workload component access to the confidential data.

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Ottawa, Canada

Jesse Pool