US 12,292,979 B2
Fabric-based root-of-trust
Mike Dvorkin, Redwood City, CA (US); Chakradhar Kar, San Jose, CA (US); and Ayan Banerjee, Fremont, CA (US)
Assigned to Cisco Technology, Inc., San Jose, CA (US)
Filed by Cisco Technology, Inc., San Jose, CA (US)
Filed on Oct. 31, 2022, as Appl. No. 18/051,167.
Prior Publication US 2024/0143773 A1, May 2, 2024
Int. Cl. G06F 21/57 (2013.01)
CPC G06F 21/575 (2013.01) [G06F 2221/034 (2013.01)] 20 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A method of creating a root-of-trust (ROT) within a network fabric, comprising:
powering on a network interface card (NIC) baseboard management controller (BMC) (NIC BMC) located on a NIC;
booting up a NIC via the NIC BMC;
obtaining an address for the NIC;
verifying an identity of the NIC at a fabric trust identity server using a key obtained from a secure vault communicatively coupled to the NIC BMC;
verifying with the fabric trust identity server a number of images of a host device residing in the NIC based at least in part on the identity of the NIC being verified; and
instructing a platform BMC to boot up the host device based at least in part on the number of images of the host device being verified.