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US 11,455,398 B2Granted
Testing storage protection hardware in a secure virtual machine environment
AssigneeInternational Business Machines Corporation
InventorsLisa Cranton Heller, Fadi Y. Busaba
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A method for testing storage protection hardware includes receiving by a non-trusted entity that is executing on a host server, a request to dispatch a secure entity. It is determined, by a secure interface control of the host server, whether the host server is in an auxiliary-secure (AS) debug mode for testing an AS entity. Based on determining that the host server is in the AS debug mode, a secure guest entity state is loaded from a state descriptor for the secure entity into an AS entity state in hardware to test, upon dispatch of the secure entity, accesses to pages in a memory that are registered as secure and as belonging to the AS entity.
Claims21
A method comprising:
- receiving by a non-trusted entity that is executing on a host server, a request to dispatch a secure entity;
- determining, by a secure interface control of the host server, whether the host server is in an auxiliary-secure (AS) debug mode for testing an AS entity, the determining based on a value of an AS-debug bit;
- and
- based on determining that the host server is in the AS debug mode, loading a secure guest entity state from a state descriptor for the secure entity into an AS entity state in hardware to test, upon dispatch of the secure entity, accesses to pages in a memory that are registered as secure and as belonging to the AS entity,
- wherein the testing comprises verifying that hardware used by the secure interface control is working properly to prevent unauthorized accesses to data structures used by the secure interface control, the testing performed when the host server is in the AS debug mode, and the AS debug mode does not require infrastructure of the secure interface control to be operational during the testing.
2 more elements
A system comprising:
- a memory;
- a secure interface control;
- and
- a host server coupled with the memory and the secure interface control, the system configured to perform operations comprising:
- receiving by a non-trusted entity that is executing on the host server, a request to dispatch a secure entity;
- determining, by the secure interface control, whether the host server is in an auxiliary-secure (AS) debug mode for testing an AS entity, the determining based on a value of an AS-debug bit;
- and
- based on determining that the host server is in the AS debug mode, loading a secure guest entity state from a state descriptor for the secure entity into an AS entity state in hardware to test, upon dispatch of the secure entity, accesses to pages in a memory that are registered as secure and as belonging to the AS entity,
- wherein, the testing comprises verifying that hardware used by the secure interface control is working properly to prevent unauthorized accesses to data structures used by the secure interface control, the testing performed when the host server is in the AS debug mode, and the AS debug mode does not require infrastructure of the secure interface control to be operational during the testing.
6 more elements
A computer program product comprising a computer readable storage medium, the computer readable storage medium comprising computer executable instructions, which when executing by a processing unit causes the processing unit to perform a method comprising:
- receiving, by a non-trusted entity that is executing on a host server, a request to dispatch a secure entity;
- determining, by a secure interface control of the host server, whether the host server is in an auxiliary-secure (AS) debug mode for testing an AS entity, the determining based on a value of an AS-debug bit;
- and
- based on determining that the host server is in the AS debug mode, loading a secure guest entity state from a state descriptor for the secure entity into an AS entity state in hardware to test, upon dispatch of the secure entity, accesses to pages in a memory that are registered as secure and as belonging to the AS entity,
- wherein, the testing comprises verifying that hardware used by the secure interface control is working properly to prevent unauthorized accesses to data structures used by the secure interface control, the testing performed when the host server is in the AS debug mode, and the AS debug mode does not require infrastructure of the secure interface control to be operational during the testing.
2 more elements
A method comprising:
- receiving by a non-trusted entity that is executing on a host server, a request to dispatch a secure entity;
- determining, by a secure interface control of the host server, whether the secure entity is in an auxiliary-secure (AS) debug mode for testing an AS entity, the determining based on a value of one or more bits in a state descriptor for the secure entity;
- based on determining that the secure entity is in the AS debug mode, loading an AS entity state from the state descriptor for the secure entity into an AS entity state in the hardware to test, upon dispatch of the secure entity, access to pages in a memory that are registered as secure and as belonging to the AS entity,
- wherein, the testing comprises verifying that hardware used by the secure interface control is working properly to prevent unauthorized accesses to data structures used by the secure interface control, the testing performed when the host server is in the AS debug mode, and the AS debug mode does not require infrastructure of the secure interface control to be operational during the testing.
1 more element
A system comprising:
- a memory;
- a secure interface control;
- and
- a host server coupled with the memory and the secure interface control, the system configured to perform operations comprising:
- receiving by a non-trusted entity that is executing on a host server, a request to dispatch a secure entity;
- determining, by a secure interface control of the host server, whether the secure entity is in an auxiliary-secure (AS) debug mode for testing an AS entity, the determining based on a value of one or more bits in a state descriptor for the secure entity;
- based on determining that the secure entity is in the AS debug mode, loading an AS entity state from a state descriptor for the secure entity into the AS entity state in hardware to test, upon dispatch of the secure entity, access to pages in a memory that are registered as secure and as belonging to an AS entity,
- wherein, the testing comprises verifying that hardware used by the secure interface control is working properly to prevent unauthorized accesses to data structures used by the secure interface control, the testing performed when the host server is in the AS debug mode, and the AS debug mode does not require infrastructure of the secure interface control to be operational during the testing.
5 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.