Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Sylvan Wesley Clebsch

Matthew John Parkinson

David Thomas Chisnall

Cédric Alain Marie Christophe Fournet

Mark Eugene Russinovich

Manuel Costa

Hervey O Wilson

Kahren Tevosyan

Manuel Silverio Da Silva Costa

Felix Schuster

Antoine Jean Denis Delignat-lavaud

Roy Schuster

John Andrew Starks

Kapil Vaswani

Stavros Volos

Alexander Shamis

Cédric Alain Marie Fournet

Marc Manuel Johannes Brockschmidt

Samuel Alexander Webster

Sean A Allen

Ronald John Kamiel Euphrasia Bjones

Syed Samin Ishtiaq

Kenneth Gordon

Jade Ella Carla Alglave

Wei-Lun Tsai

Amaury Pierre Paul Chamayou

Antonio Nino Diaz

Andrew Madison Kent

A method of running a computer program comprising concurrent threads, wherein: at any time, the program is in a current global execution phase, GEP, each thread is divided into a sequence of local execution phases, LEPs, each corresponding to a different GEP, wherein the thread is in a current LEP that cannot progress beyond the LEP corresponding to the current GEP; any of the threads is able to advance the GEP if the current LEP of all threads has reached the LEP corresponding to the current GEP; one thread comprises code to perform an internal acquire to acquire a lock on its respective LEP; and at least one other threads comprises code to perform an external release to force advancement of the current LEP of said one thread, but wherein the external release will be blocked if said thread has performed the internal acquire.

Managing global and local execution phases

The disclosed technology is generally directed to a distributed query-and-command system. In one example of the technology, in a trusted execution environment (TEE) of a first node, database code of the first node and distributed ledger code of the first node is executed, such that execution of the distributed ledger code of the first node instantiates a first instance of a distributed ledger of a consortium blockchain, and such that execution of the query-and-command code of the first node instantiates a first instance of a query-and-command system. The consortium blockchain is distributed among a plurality of nodes, and the query-and-command system is distributed among the plurality of nodes. A first transaction that is associated with modifying the query-and-command system is received. The first transaction is executed. Changes associated with the first transaction to the distributed ledger are persisted.

Confidential blockchain database with a distributed ledger

The disclosed technology is generally directed to code transparency. In one example of the technology, a claim associated with an application is received. The claim is a document that is signed with a claim signature and that includes evidence associated with a policy, and further includes an expected set of at least one binary measurement associated with the application. The evidence is cryptographically verifiable evidence associated with the application. A trusted execution environment (TEE) is used to provide a distributed ledger. The claim is verified. Verifying the claim includes verifying the expected set of at least one binary measurement associated with the application, verifying the claim signature, and, based at least on the evidence, verifying that the application meets the policy. Upon successful verification of the claim, the claim is appended to the distributed ledger. A ledger countersignature associated with the claim is generated.

Code transparency system operation

The disclosed technology is generally directed to code transparency. In one example of the technology, evidence associated with a policy is obtained. The evidence includes data that includes cryptographically verifiable evidence associated with initial source code in accordance with the policy. The initial source code is source code for a CTS. The initial binary is based on the initial source code is executed in a TEE such that a CTS instance begins operation. The CTS instance is configured to register guarantee(s) associated with code approved by the CTS instance. The TEE is used to provide a ledger. The evidence is stored on the ledger. Measurement(s) associated with the binary are provided. A service key associated with CTS instance is generated. TEE attestation of the measurement(s), the evidence, and the service key is provided.

Bootstrapping a code transparency system

A method of memory deallocation across a trust boundary between a first software component and a second software component is described. Some memory is shared between the first and second software components. An in-memory message passing facility is implemented using the shared memory. The first software component is used to deallocate memory from the shared memory which has been allocated by the second software component. The deallocation is done by: taking at least one allocation to be freed from the message passing facility; and freeing the at least one allocation using a local deallocation mechanism while validating that memory access to memory owned by data structures related to memory allocation within the shared memory are within the shared memory.

Memory deallocation across a trust boundary

According to a first aspect, execution logic is configured to perform a linear capability transfer operation which transfers a physical capability from a partition of a first software modules to a partition of a second of software module without retaining it in the partition of the first. According to a second, alternative or additional aspect, the execution logic is configured to perform a sharding operation whereby a physical capability is divided into at least two instances, which may later be combined.

System for confidential computing with capabilities

A system comprising a hosting service configured to perform: providing, to a trusted entity on a central processing unit, a command for a launch of a virtual machine (VM); assigning, to the VM, at least a portion of memory for the guest operating system; submitting, to the trusted entity, a request to measure an address space of the VM to provide a measurement digest of the address space of the guest operating system; including, in a configuration object, a policy provided by the user for the service logic, wherein the policy defines one or more rules for the service logic, wherein the one or more rules include at least one rule for which containers may run in the guest operating system; hashing the policy to provide a hash digest of the policy; submitting, to the trusted entity, the hash digest of the policy; and completing the launch of the VM.

Secure computing mechanism

Confidential computing mechanism

In various examples there is a computing device in communication with at least one other computing device via a communications network. The computing device has a memory and a central processing unit having a trusted execution environment comprising trusted regions of the memory. The computing device has an operating system configured to create a memory mapping between a virtual address space of the memory and a memory of the at least one other computing device and to provide details of the memory mapping to the trusted execution environment. The trusted execution environment is configured to execute an application which is able to communicate with the other computing device directly using the memory mapping provided by the operating system.

Side-channel protection

A computer system has a separation mechanism which enforces separation between at least two execution environments such that one execution environment is a gatekeeper which interposes on all communications of the other execution environment. The computer system has an attestation mechanism which enables the gatekeeper to attest to properties of the at least two execution environments. A first one of the execution environments runs application specific code which may contain security vulnerabilities. The gatekeeper is configured to enforce an input output policy on the first execution environment by interposing on all communication to and from the first execution environment by forwarding, modifying or dropping individual ones of the communications according to the policy. The gatekeeper provides evidence of attestation both for the application specific code and the policy.

Execution environment and gatekeeper arrangement

A method of operating a computer according to an actor model, the method comprising: defining a plurality of actors, each taking form of a data structure comprising respective data and one or more respective functions for operating on the respective data; generating a wrapped message to be transmitted from a transmitting actor to multiple recipient actors, the wrapped message comprising at least one constituent message, a sorted list of the recipient actors, and an index indicating an entry in the list, the index initially being set to indicate the first recipient actor in the list; transmitting the wrapped message from the transmitting actor to the first recipient actor in the list; each of the recipient actors, except the last in the list, upon receiving the wrapped message, advancing the index and forwarding the wrapped message to the next actor in the list as indicated by the advanced index.

Actor model programming

In various examples, there is a computer-implemented method for providing packages for processing on a computer system. The method creates a secure connection to an enclave and retrieves a quote to verify that the enclave is genuine and that it contains a predetermined process. The predetermined process is configured to create an enclave for itself and determine that an initial state of the computer system is equivalent to a predetermined state based on a quote retrieved from a security module. The predetermined process is further configured to receive a package to be processed by the computer system and cause the processor to process the package outside of the enclave. In response to verifying the enclave, the method provides a package to be processed by the computer system.

Package processing

A method of communicating messages between threads. For each thread there are defined M buckets. When a transmitting thread has a message to send, it assigns the message to the bucket numbered m=Tid_r mod M to await transmission, where Tid_r is the ID of the receiving thread. The bucket m=Tid_t mod M is the home bucket, where Tid_t is the ID of the transmitting thread. After accumulating multiple messages, a batch transmission is performed, comprising a plurality of successive phases p. Each phase comprises: i) from each bucket other than the home bucket, transmitting some or all of the messages in the bucket as a batch to one of the receiving threads of the bucket, and ii) except in the last phase, incrementing the phase p by 1, and redistributing the messages remaining in the home bucket according to m=(Tid_r/M{circumflex over (&#x2003;)}p) mod M.

Growing community of inventors

Cambridge, United Kingdom

Sylvan Wesley Clebsch