Cryptographic memory ownership table for secure public cloud

US10671737B2 · kind B2 · utility

Assignee

• Intel Corporation · US

Inventors

• David M. Durham · Beaverton, US
• Siddhartha Chhabra · Portland, US
• Ravi L. Sahita · Portland, US
• Barry E. Huntley · Hillsboro, US
• Gilbert Neiger · Hillsboro, US
• Gideon Gerzon · Jerusalem, IL
• Baiju V. Patel · Portland, US

Key dates

• Filing date: Nov 10, 2017
• Grant date: Jun 2, 2020
• Expiry date: Jun 3, 2038

Classification

• Technology area (CPC G): Physics
• CPC primary: G06F2212/1052
• WIPO field: Computer technology
• WIPO sector: Electrical engineering

Abstract

In a public cloud environment, each consumer's/guest's workload is encrypted in a cloud service provider's (CSP's) server memory using a consumer-provided key unknown to the CSP's workload management software. An encrypted consumer/guest workload image is loaded into the CSP's server memory at a memory location specified by the CSP's workload management software. Based upon the CSP-designated memory location, the guest workload determines expected hardware physical addresses into which memory mapping structures and other types of consumer data should be loaded. These expected hardware physical addresses are specified by the guest workload in a memory ownership table (MOT), which is used to check that subsequently CSP-designated memory mappings are as expected. Memory ownership table entries also may be encrypted by the consumer-provided key unknown to the CSP.