Secure Virtual Disk Images for Grid Computing

Abstract

We present in our paper a secure, flexible and transparent security architecture for virtual disk images.Virtual disk images are often overlooked in security concepts, especially in a grid environment where disk images are considered to be secure as long as they reside within the secured borders of the data center.However, for some applications this level of assurance is not satisfactory.In our security architecture, virtualized guests transparently benefit from integrity as well as confidentiality assurance.Traditional virtual disk images lack the ability of an efficient integrity protection mechanism.We base our concepts on trusted computing utilizing the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) to efficiently deliver integrity assurance to virtual disk images.Further, we allow a restrictive rule-set to be imposed by the virtual disk image owner, and we enable the owner to retain control over the virtual disk image throughout its life-cycle.