Support for Intel TXT Technology

Background:

Trusted compute pools with Intel Trusted Execution Technology enable isolation and tamper detection in boot process and complement run time protections. Meanwhile, hardware-based trust provides verification useful in compliance and trust status, which security and policy applications use to control workload

Using Intel's TXT technology, a number of painpoints of a secure computing environments can be addressed. For example, Isolation is a key concern in a shared infrastructure where a lack of traditional guarantees of physical separation are lacking and multiple workloads may interfere with each other. Enforcement i.e. controls needed to enforce protection of Infrastructure can prevent pre-runtime environments are target of new attacks and low-level attacks are hard to detect and can be difficult to recover from.Encryption is another problem that can get worse in a cloud where data protection can be harder due to lack of boundaries and multi-tenancy.

Source: Intel TXT Overview

Requirement:

- CloudStack will work with an attestation server to secure the deployed XenServer Hosts - the attestation server has the capability to compare launch values against "known good"

- when setting up a cloudstack environment, automatically understand which XS hosts are "trustworthy" and present it to the admin

- admins are able to create a service offering that will allow users to select if they need the VMs to be deployed on trusted hosts

- ensure that VMs requested in such a manner are always placed on trusted hosts

- whenever a trusted host or the attestation server itself is rebooted, verify the trustworthiness

- deny migration of VM from a trusted to untrusted host