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.

Confidentiality and integrity of data in Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) environments increase in relevance as adoption of IaaS advances towards maturity. While current solutions assume a high degree of trust in IaaS provider staff and infrastructure management processes, earlier incidents have demonstrated that neither are impeccable. In this paper we introduce Domain-Based Storage Protection (DBSP) a data confidentiality and integrity protection mechanism for IaaS environments, which relies on trusted computing principles to provide transparent storage isolation between IaaS clients. We describe the building blocks of this mechanism and provide a set of detailed protocols for generation and handling of keys for confidentiality and integrity protection of data stored by guest VM instances. The protocols assume an untrusted IaaS provider and aim to prevent both malicious and accidental faulty configurations that could lead to breach of data confidentiality and integrity in IaaS deployments.