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Logical attestation: an authorization architecture for trustworthy computing

Authors:

Emin Gün Sirer,

Willem de Bruijn,

Patrick Reynolds,

Fred B. SchneiderAuthors Info & Claims

SOSP '11: Proceedings of the Twenty-Third ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles

Pages 249 - 264

https://doi.org/10.1145/2043556.2043580

Published: 23 October 2011 Publication History

Abstract

This paper describes the design and implementation of a new operating system authorization architecture to support trustworthy computing. Called logical attestation, this architecture provides a sound framework for reasoning about run time behavior of applications. Logical attestation is based on attributable, unforgeable statements about program properties, expressed in a logic. These statements are suitable for mechanical processing, proof construction, and verification; they can serve as credentials, support authorization based on expressive authorization policies, and enable remote principals to trust software components without restricting the local user's choice of binary implementations.

We have implemented logical attestation in a new operating system called the Nexus. The Nexus executes natively on x86 platforms equipped with secure coprocessors. It supports both native Linux applications and uses logical attestation to support new trustworthy-computing applications. When deployed on a trustworthy cloud-computing stack, logical attestation is efficient, achieves high-performance, and can run applications that provide qualitative guarantees not possible with existing modes of attestation.

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Index Terms

Logical attestation: an authorization architecture for trustworthy computing
1. Security and privacy
  1. Systems security
    1. Operating systems security

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cover image ACM Conferences

SOSP '11: Proceedings of the Twenty-Third ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles

October 2011

417 pages

ISBN:9781450309776

DOI:10.1145/2043556

General Chair:
Ted Wobber
MSR Silicon Valley
,
Program Chair:
Peter Druschel
MPI-SWS

Copyright © 2011 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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INESC: Systems and Computer Engineering Institute
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Published: 23 October 2011

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SOSP '11: ACM SIGOPS 23nd Symposium on Operating Systems Principles

October 23 - 26, 2011

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Overall Acceptance Rate 174 of 961 submissions, 18%

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https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3627703.3650089
Madhushanie NVidanagamachchi SArachchilage N(2024)Selfish mining attack in blockchain: a systematic literature reviewInternational Journal of Information Security10.1007/s10207-024-00849-523:3(2333-2351)Online publication date: 10-Apr-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10207-024-00849-5
Sheff IWang XBabel KNi Hvan Renesse RMyers A(2023)Charlotte: Reformulating Blockchains into a Web of Composable Attested Data Structures for Cross-Domain ApplicationsACM Transactions on Computer Systems10.1145/3607534Online publication date: 22-Jul-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3607534
Zhang ZZhang HWang JHu XLi JYu WYu PLi WCui BZhu GSood KWill BGuan H(2023)QKPT: Securing Your Private Keys in Cloud With Performance, Scalability and TransparencyIEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing10.1109/TDSC.2021.313740320:1(478-491)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2023
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