Secure management of operations on protected virtual machines

US10176095B2 · kind B2 · utility

Assignee

• MICROSOFT TECHNOLOGY LICENSING, LLC · US

Inventors

• Niels T. Ferguson · Redmond, US
• Yevgeniy A. Samsonov · Redmond, US
• Kinshumann · Redmond, US
• Samartha Chandrashekar · Bellevue, US
• John Anthony Messec · Bellevue, US
• Mark F. Novak · Newcastle, US
• Christopher McCarron · Hartford, US
• Amitabh Prakash Tamhane · Redmond, US
• Qiang Wang · Beijing, CN
• David Kruse · Kirkland, US
• Nir Ben-Zvi · Redmond, US
• Anders Vinberg · Kirkland, US

Key dates

• Filing date: Aug 22, 2016
• Grant date: Jan 8, 2019
• Expiry date: Oct 29, 2036

Classification

• Technology area (CPC H): Electricity
• CPC primary: H04L2463/062
• WIPO field: Computer technology
• WIPO sector: Electrical engineering

Abstract

A virtual secure mode is enabled for a virtual machine operating in a computing environment that is associated with a plurality of different trust levels. First, a virtual secure mode image is loaded into one or more memory pages of a virtual memory space of the virtual machine. Then, the one or more memory pages of the virtual memory space are made inaccessible to one or more trust levels having a relatively lower trust level than a launching trust level that is used by a virtual secure mode loader to load the virtual secure mode image. A target virtual trust level is also enabled on a launching virtual processor for the virtual machine that is higher than the launching trust level.