Dynamic policy discovery with remote attestation

Abstract

Remote attestation allows programs running on trusted hardware to prove their identity (and that of their environment) to programs on other hosts. Remote attestation can be used to address security concerns if programs agree on the meaning of data in attestations. This paper studies the enforcement of codeidentity based access control policies in a hostile distributed environment, using a combination of remote attestation, dynamic types, and typechecking. This ensures that programs agree on the meaning of data and cannot violate the access control policy, even in the presence of opponent processes. The formal setting is a π-calculus with secure channels, process identity, and remote attestation. Our approach allows executables to be typechecked and deployed independently, without the need for secure initial key and policy distribution beyond the trusted hardware itself. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006.