Multi-processor architectural support for protecting virtual machine privacy in untrusted cloud environment

Virtualization is fundamental to cloud computing because it allows multiple operating systems to run simultaneously on a physical machine. However, it also brings a range of security/privacy problems. One particularly challenging and important problem is: how can we protect the Virtual Machines (VMs) from being attacked by Virtual Machine Monitors (VMMs) and/or by the cloud vendors when they are not trusted? In this paper, we propose an architectural solution to the above problem in multi-processor cloud environments. Our key idea is to exploit hardware mechanisms to enforce access control over the shared resources (e.g., memory spaces), while protecting VM memory integrity as well as inter-processor communications and data sharing. We evaluate the solution using full-system emulation and cycle-based architecture models. Experiments based on 20 benchmark applications show that the performance overhead is 1.5%--10% when access control is enforced, and 9%--19% when VM memory is encrypted.