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US 8,555,377 B2Granted
Secure virtual machine
AssigneeHigh Cloud Security, Inc.
InventorStephen D. Pate
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
An approach to securely distributing and running virtual machines is described that addresses the inherent insecurity of mobile virtual machines by authenticating a user before establishing a specialized virtualization runtime environment that includes a filesystem driver inserted into the host operating system to provide secure access to a virtual machine by authorized hypervisors only. Further described is the creation of a SecureVM package that includes the various components used to perform the operations of installation, user authentication and establishment of the specialized virtualization runtime environment.
Claims20
A method for securely running a virtual machine on a computer, the method comprising:
- establishing a host runtime environment on the computer using a host runtime component of a secure virtual machine package;
- presenting to a user of the computer a choice of at least one virtual machine of the secure virtual machine package;
- receiving a selection from the user of the computer of one of the at least one virtual machine of the secure virtual machine package;
- accessing encrypted meta-data from the secure virtual machine package to obtain a user authentication security policy;
- authenticating the user of the computer according to the obtained user authentication security policy;
- establishing a virtual machine runtime environment on the computer including inserting a secure filesystem from the secure virtual machine package into a host operating system of the computer thereby authorizing a hypervisor of the host operating system;
- and
- accessing encrypted virtual machine files of the user selected virtual machine of the secure virtual machine package via the secure filesystem for the authorized hypervisor of the host operating system by the secure filesystem intercepting read requests from the authorized hypervisor to a regular file system of the host operating system and performing decryption of the secure virtual machine files in response to the intercepted read requests from the authorized hypervisor.
5 more elements
A method for securely running a virtual machine on a computer, the method comprising:
- establishing a host runtime environment on the computer using a host runtime component of a secure virtual machine package;
- presenting to a user of the computer a choice of at least one virtual machine of the secure virtual machine package;
- receiving a selection from the user of the computer of one of the at least one virtual machine of the secure virtual machine package;
- accessing encrypted meta-data from the secure virtual machine package to obtain a user authentication security policy;
- authenticating the user of the computer according to the obtained user authentication security policy;
- establishing a virtual machine runtime environment on the computer including inserting a secure filesystem from the secure virtual machine package into a host operating system of the computer thereby authorizing a hypervisor of the host operating system;
- and
- accessing encrypted virtual machine files of the user selected virtual machine of the secure virtual machine package via the secure filesystem for the authorized hypervisor of the host operating system by the secure filesystem intercepting write requests from the authorized hypervisor to a regular file system of the host operating system and performing encryption of a modified form of the secure virtual machine files in response to the intercepted write requests from the authorized hypervisor.
5 more elements
A non-transitory computer readable medium containing programming code executable by a processor, the programming code configured to perform a method comprising:
- establishing a host runtime environment on the computer using a host runtime component of a secure virtual machine package;
- presenting to a user of the computer a choice of at least one virtual machine of the secure virtual machine package;
- receiving a selection from the user of the computer of one of the at least one virtual machine of the secure virtual machine package;
- accessing encrypted meta-data from the secure virtual machine package to obtain a user authentication security policy;
- authenticating the user of the computer according to the obtained user authentication security policy;
- establishing a virtual machine runtime environment on the computer including inserting a secure filesystem from the secure virtual machine package into a host operating system of the computer thereby authorizing a hypervisor of the host operating system;
- and
- accessing encrypted virtual machine files of the user selected virtual machine of the secure virtual machine package via the secure filesystem for the authorized hypervisor of the host operating system by the secure filesystem intercepting read requests from the authorized hypervisor to a regular file system of the host operating system and performing decryption of the secure virtual machine files in response to the intercepted read requests from the authorized hypervisor.
5 more elements
A non-transitory computer readable medium containing programming code executable by a processor, the programming code configured to perform a method comprising:
- establishing a host runtime environment on the computer using a host runtime component of a secure virtual machine package;
- presenting to a user of the computer a choice of at least one virtual machine of the secure virtual machine package;
- receiving a selection from the user of the computer of one of the at least one virtual machine of the secure virtual machine package;
- accessing encrypted meta-data from the secure virtual machine package to obtain a user authentication security policy;
- authenticating the user of the computer according to the obtained user authentication security policy;
- establishing a virtual machine runtime environment on the computer including inserting a secure filesystem from the secure virtual machine package into a host operating system of the computer thereby authorizing a hypervisor of the host operating system;
- and
- accessing encrypted virtual machine files of the user selected virtual machine of the secure virtual machine package via the secure filesystem for the authorized hypervisor of the host operating system by the secure filesystem intercepting write requests from the authorized hypervisor to a regular file system of the host operating system and performing encryption of a modified form of the secure virtual machine files in response to the intercepted write requests from the authorized hypervisor.
5 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.