Cryptographic Memory Ownership Table For Secure Public Cloud

A data processing system comprising:

• memory;
• and
• a processor in communication with the memory, wherein the processor comprises circuitry which enables the processor to:
• execute an untrusted virtual machine monitor (VMM) to manage execution of a guest workload in the data processing system, wherein to manage execution of the guest workload comprises to allocate a region of memory for the guest workload;
• populate an entry in a memory ownership table for the guest workload, wherein the memory ownership table is indexed by an original hardware physical address, the entry in the memory ownership table comprises an expected guest address that corresponds to the original hardware physical address, and the entry in the memory ownership table is encrypted with a key domain key;
• and
• in response to receiving a request from the guest workload to access the memory using a requested guest address:
• (a) obtain, from the untrusted VMM, a translated VMM-provided hardware physical address that corresponds to the requested guest address;
• (b) use the VMM-provided hardware physical address as an index to find an entry in the memory ownership table that corresponds to the VMM-provided hardware physical address;
• and
• (c) verify whether the expected guest address from the found entry matches the requested guest address.

A method for managing a guest workload in a data processing system, the method comprising:

• executing an untrusted virtual machine monitor (VMM) that manages execution of a guest workload, wherein managing execution of the guest workload comprises allocating a region of memory for the guest workload;
• populating an entry in a memory ownership table for the guest workload, wherein the memory ownership table is indexed by an original hardware physical address, the entry in the memory ownership table comprises an expected guest address that corresponds to the original hardware physical address, and the entry in the memory ownership table is encrypted with a key domain key;
• and
• in response to receiving a request from the guest workload to access the memory using a requested guest address:
• (a) obtaining, from the untrusted VMM, a translated VMM-provided hardware physical address that corresponds to the requested guest address;
• (b) using the VMM-provided hardware physical address as an index to find an entry in the memory ownership table that corresponds to the VMM-provided hardware physical address;
• and
• (c) verifying whether the expected guest address from the found entry matches the requested guest address.