US 12,468,859 B2
Selecting an HSM for association to a secure guest
Reinhard Theodor Buendgen, Tuebingen (DE); Viktor Mihajlovski, Wildberg (DE); Jonathan D. Bradbury, Poughkeepsie, NY (US); Harald Freudenberger, Fellbach (DE); Steffen Eiden, Böblingen (DE); Volker Urban, Böblingen (DE); and Eric David Rossman, Hopewell Junction, NY (US)
Assigned to International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY (US)
Filed by INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORPORATION, Armonk, NY (US)
Filed on Jan. 25, 2023, as Appl. No. 18/159,376.
Claims priority of application No. 2217880 (GB), filed on Nov. 29, 2022.
Prior Publication US 2024/0176913 A1, May 30, 2024
Int. Cl. G06F 21/72 (2013.01)
CPC G06F 21/72 (2013.01) 25 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A computer-implemented method for a policy-based association of a hardware security module (HSM) with a secure guest in a confidential computing environment, the method comprising:
maintaining, by a trusted firmware, a binding between the secure guest and an HSM, wherein the binding enables the secure guest to send only non-sensitive requests to the HSM;
maintaining, by the trusted firmware, for the secure guest, a pair of a secret and a secret name;
submitting, by the secure guest via the trusted firmware, a query to the bound HSM for obtaining HSM configuration data; and
upon determining, by the secure guest, that the obtained HSM configuration data match a policy rule available to the secure guest, wherein the policy rule associates the HSM configuration data with the secret name, requesting, by the secure guest from the trusted firmware, to associate the secret from the pair of secret and the secret name with the bound HSM, thereby triggering that the trusted firmware allows the secure guest to submit a sensitive crypto-request to the bound and associated HSM.