Skip to main content

Trusted Launch of Virtual Machine Instances in Public IaaS Environments

  • Conference paper

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNSC,volume 7839))

Abstract

Cloud computing and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) are emerging and promising technologies, however their adoption is hampered by data security concerns. At the same time, Trusted Computing (TC) is experiencing an increasing interest as a security mechanism for IaaS. In this paper we present a protocol to ensure the launch of a virtual machine (VM) instance on a trusted remote compute host. Relying on Trusted Platform Module operations such as binding and sealing to provide integrity guarantees for clients that require a trusted VM launch, we have designed a trusted launch protocol for VM instances in public IaaS environments. We also present a proof-of-concept implementation of the protocol based on OpenStack, an open-source IaaS platform. The results provide a basis for the use of TC mechanisms within IaaS platforms and pave the way for a wider applicability of TC to IaaS security.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Buying options

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD   39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD   54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. Smith, J., Nair, R.: Virtual Machines: Versatile Platforms for Systems and Processes. Morgan Kaufmann (June 2005)

    Google Scholar 

  2. Krutz, R.L., Vines, R.D.: Cloud Security: A Comprehensive Guide to Secure Cloud Computing. John Wiley & Sons (August 2010)

    Google Scholar 

  3. Somorovsky, J., Heiderich, M., Jensen, M., Schwenk, J., Gruschka, N., Lo Iacono, L.: All Your Clouds are Belong to us: Security Analysis of Cloud Management Interfaces. In: Proceedings of the 3rd ACM Workshop on Cloud Computing Security, CCSW 2011, pp. 3–14. ACM, New York (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  4. Ristenpart, T., Tromer, E., Shacham, H., Savage, S.: Hey, You, Get Off of My Cloud: Exploring Information Leakage in Third-Party Compute Clouds. In: Proceedings of the 16th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security, CCS 2009, pp. 199–212. ACM, New York (2009)

    Google Scholar 

  5. Pohlmann, N., Reimer, H.: Trusted Computing - eine Einführung. In: Pohlmann, N., Reimer, H. (eds.) Trusted Computing, pp. 3–12. Vieweg+Teubner (2008), doi:10.1007/978-3-8348-9452-6_1

    Google Scholar 

  6. Neisse, R., Holling, D., Pretschner, A.: Implementing Trust in Cloud Infrastructures. In: 2011 11th IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Cluster, Cloud and Grid Computing (CCGrid), pp. 524–533 (May 2011)

    Google Scholar 

  7. Sadeghi, A.-R., Stüble, C., Winandy, M.: Property-Based TPM Virtualization. In: Wu, T.-C., Lei, C.-L., Rijmen, V., Lee, D.-T. (eds.) ISC 2008. LNCS, vol. 5222, pp. 1–16. Springer, Heidelberg (2008)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  8. Danev, B., Masti, R.J., Karame, G.O., Capkun, S.: Enabling Secure VM-vTPM Migration in Private Clouds. In: Proceedings of the 27th Annual Computer Security Applications Conference, ACSAC 2011, pp. 187–196. ACM, New York (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Santos, N., Gummadi, K.P., Rodrigues, R.: Towards Trusted Cloud Computing. In: Proceedings of the 2009 Conference on Hot Topics in Cloud Computing, HotCloud 2009. USENIX Association, Berkeley (2009)

    Google Scholar 

  10. Aslam, M., Gehrmann, C., Rasmusson, L., Björkman, M.: Securely Launching Virtual Machines on Trustworthy Platforms in a Public Cloud - An Enterprise’s Perspective. In: Leymann, F., Ivanov, I., van Sinderen, M., Shan, T. (eds.) CLOSER, pp. 511–521. SciTePress (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  11. Aslam, M., Gehrmann, C., Björkman, M.: Security and Trust Preserving VM Migrations in Public Clouds. In: 2012 IEEE 11th International Conference on Trust, Security and Privacy in Computing and Communications (TrustCom), Liverpool (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  12. Mell, P., Gance, T.: The nist definition of cloud computing. Technical report, National Institute of Standards and Technology (September 2011)

    Google Scholar 

  13. Goyal, P.: Application of a Distributed Security Method to End-2-End Services Security in Independent Heterogeneous Cloud Computing Environments. In: 2011 IEEE World Congress on Services, pp. 379–384 (July 2011)

    Google Scholar 

  14. Trusted Computing Group: TCG Specification, Architecture Overview, revision 1.4. Technical report, Trusted Computing Group (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  15. Boyko, V., MacKenzie, P., Patel, S.: Provably secure password-authenticated key exchange using diffie-hellman. In: Preneel, B. (ed.) EUROCRYPT 2000. LNCS, vol. 1807, pp. 156–171. Springer, Heidelberg (2000)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  16. Price, M.: The Paradox of Security in Virtual Environments. Computer 41(11), 22–28 (2008)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Wojtczuk, R., Rutkowska, J., Tereshkin, A.: Attacking intel trusted execution technology. In: Black Hat USA 2008, Las Vegas, NV, August 7 (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  18. Halderman, J.A., Schoen, S.D., Heninger, N., Clarkson, W., Paul, W., Calandrino, J.A., Feldman, A.J., Appelbaum, J., Felten, E.W.: Lest We Remember: Cold-Boot Attacks on Encryption Keys. Commun. ACM 52, 91–98 (2009)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Schiffman, J., Moyer, T., Vijayakumar, H., Jaeger, T., McDaniel, P.: Seeding Clouds With Trust Anchors. In: Proceedings of the, ACM Workshop on Cloud Computing Security, CCSW 2010, pp. 43–46. ACM, New York (2010)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  20. Molnar, D., Schechter, S.: Self Hosting vs. Cloud Hosting: Accounting for the Security Impact of Hosting in the Cloud. In: Workshop of the Economics of Cloud Security, pp. 1–18 (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  21. Chen, Y., Paxson, V., Katz, R.: The Hybrex Model for Confidentiality and Privacy in Cloud Computing. Technical Report UCB/EECS-2010-5, EECS Department, University of California, Berkeley (January 2010)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

Paladi, N., Gehrmann, C., Aslam, M., Morenius, F. (2013). Trusted Launch of Virtual Machine Instances in Public IaaS Environments. In: Kwon, T., Lee, MK., Kwon, D. (eds) Information Security and Cryptology – ICISC 2012. ICISC 2012. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 7839. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-37682-5_22

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-37682-5_22

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-37681-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-37682-5

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics