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Add AMD-SEV musings
Signed-off-by: SabreenKaur <[email protected]>
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musings/amd-sev.md

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# AMD Secure Encrypted Virtualization (AMD-SEV)
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# Concepts
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- AMD-SEV is targeted at securing virtual machines by encrypting the memory of each virtual machine with a unique key.
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- SEV can protect your machine from a potentially malicious hypervisor.
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- SEV can calculate a signature of virtual machine's memory content which can be sent to the VM's owner as an attestation that the memory on the target host, was encrypted correctly by firmware.
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- AMD-SEV SNP is an extension to SEV which adds new hardware-based security protections
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## Keys used in SEV
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The AMD SEV firmware provides a mechanism to verify that it is executing on AMD hardware that supports SEV. The following key hierarchy, rooted in an AMD-owned key, is used in this process:
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- $PDH$ (Platform Diffie Hellman) key - This key is used to negotiate a master secret which is then used with a key derivation function to establish a trusted channel
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- $PEK$ (Platform Endorsement Key) - This key signs the $PDH$ to anchor the $PDH$ to the AMD root of trust and the platform owner's root of trust
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- $CEK$ (Chip endorsement key) - This key signs the $PEK$ to anchor the $PEK$ to the AMD root of trust. Each chip has a unique $CEK$ which is derived from secrets stored in the chip's one-time programmable (OTP) memory
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- $ASK$ (AMD Signing Key) - The $ASK$ private key signs the $CEK$ public key to demonstrate that the $CEK$ is an authentic AMD key
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- $ARK$ (AMD Root Key) - The $ARK$ private key signs the $ASK$ public key to demonstrate that the $ASK$ is an authentic AMD key. This key is the root of trust of AMD and its signatures signify AMD authencity
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Therefore the following certificate chain is produced:
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$ARK \rightarrow ASK \rightarrow CEK \rightarrow PEK \rightarrow PDH$
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Therefore if the secure channel can be established using the $PDH$ key, then it is ensured that, the attesting workload is executed on, is an authentic AMD system which has the SEV feature.
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## AMD-SEV SNP Attestation report measurements
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### Platform measurements
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- CHIP_ID - The unique chip identifier
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- PLATFORM_INFO - Indicates properties of the platform configuration, for example whether whole system memory encryption (TSME) or simultaneous multithreading (SMT) is enabled
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- CURRENT_TCB - Security Version Numbers (SVNs) of the current executing platform firmware and microcode
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- COMMITTED_TCB - SVNs of the anti-rollback minimum of the platform firmware and microcode
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- REPORTED_TCB - SVN of the hypervisor. The hypervisor has the option to report a lower version
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- LAUNCH_TCB - SVNs of the platform firmware and microcode at the time the guest was launched or imported
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### Guest measurements
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- FAMILY_ID - The family ID of the guest that is provided at launch
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- IMAGE_ID - The image ID of the guest that is provided at launch
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- GUEST_SVN - The guest SVN
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- MEASUREMENT - Measurement of the guest address space
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- ID_KEY_DIGEST - SHA-384 digest of the ID public key that signed the [ID block](https://www.amd.com/system/files/TechDocs/56860.pdf#page=91) provided in `SNP_LAUNCH_FINISH`
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- AUTHOR_KEY_DIGEST - SHA-384 digest of the Author public key that certified the ID key, if provided in `SNP_LAUNCH_FINISH`
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- POLICY - The [guest policy](https://www.amd.com/system/files/TechDocs/56860.pdf#page=26)
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- REPORT_ID - Report ID of this guest
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- REPORT_ID_MA - Report ID of this guest's migration agent, if the guest is associated with a migration agent
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More details on other elements of the produced attestation report are outlined [here](https://www.amd.com/system/files/TechDocs/56860.pdf#page=44).
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# AMD-SEV SNP from Veraison's perspective
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Veraison needs two things to verify the attestation of an AMD-SEV SNP system:
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- The signed attestation report
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- $VCEK$ (Versioned Chip Endorsement Key) - The [$VCEK$](https://www.amd.com/system/files/TechDocs/57230.pdf) is the key that signs the attestation report. The key is derived from chip unique secrets and a [TCB_VERSION](https://www.amd.com/system/files/TechDocs/56860.pdf#page=18)
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- The following certificate chain that is tied to the signed attestation report
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- $ARK \rightarrow ASK \rightarrow VCEK \rightarrow$ Attestation Report
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## Current prototyping
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A protoypte of an attestation verification flow is for AMD SEV-SNP evidence can be found [here](https://github.com/SabreenKaur/amd-snp-prototype). The library used for verification of the AMD SEV-SNP reports is [here](https://github.com/google/go-sev-guest).
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### Structure of attestation verification flow
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1. Report is obtained from attester
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2. A full Attestation is derived from the report. In this step two things will happen to obtain the certificate chain (that forms part of this attestation):
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- AMD KDS (Key Distribution Service) is queried to get the ASK and ARK certificates if they are not already in the internal library cache
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- AMD KDS is queried to obtain the VCEK certificate if it is not already in the implemented time-to-live cache
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3. Non-signature fields of the report are matched against a provided JSON policy
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4. The Attestation is verified. Three things happen:
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- AMD KDS is queried to get the certificate chain (ASK, ARK and VECK) if they are not already in the their respective caches
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- Certificate revocation lists are checked
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- The Attestation report's signature is verified based on the report's signature algorithm
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### Structure of the TTL (Time-to-live) cache
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The implemented time-to-live cache is designed to hold:
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- VCEK certificates
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- CRLs (Certificate Revocation Lists)
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Structure of the implemented cache:
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- Key: `string` format of the url used to query the AMD KDS
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- Value: `byte[]` format of the certificates or CRLs returned after querying the AMD KDS
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Expiry of cache entries:
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- VCEK certificates: time to live is set to be the duration between the current time and the `vcek.NotAfter` field. VCEK certificates typically expire every 7 years after being issued
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- CRLs (Certificate Revocation Lists): time to live is set to be the duration between the current time and the `crl.NextUpdate` field. CRLs typically get refreshed every year
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A [custom getter](https://github.com/SabreenKaur/amd-snp-prototype/blob/main/ttl_getter.go) is implemented to allow us to interface with the ttl cache.
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## Open Questions
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1. What sort of background tasks need to be performed behind the kvstore exisiting functionality, when querying the AMD key service?
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- Does it need to be per scheme?
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- What are the common logics?
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- UPDATE: We can use ttl caches to store the certificates that are queried from the AMD KDS
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2. Through what mechanism can we do the checking of CRLs (certificate revocation list) or similiar?
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- UPDATE: This can be done by enabling the CheckRevocations in the Options struct
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3. How can platform (OCA) specific fields of the attestation report be verified?
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- Could it be handled by policies?
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4. Which non-signature fields of the attestation report should be validated by Veraison?
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5. Where can nonce-like freshness data be represented? Possibly in the [REPORT_DATA](https://www.amd.com/system/files/TechDocs/56860.pdf#page=43) field?

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