TPM context manager and dynamic configuration management for trusted virtualization platform

It is absolutely critical that trusted configuration management which significantly affects trust chain establishment, sealing storage and remote attestation, especially in trusted virtualization platform like Xen whose system configuration changes easily. TPM (trusted platform module) context manager is presented to carry out dynamic configuration management for virtual machine. It manages the TPM command requests and VM (virtual machine) configurations. The dynamic configuration representation method based on Merkle hash tree is explicitly proposed against TCG (trusted computing group) static configuration representation. It reflects the true VM status in real time even if the configuration has changed, and it eliminates the invalidation of configuration representation, sealing storage and remote attestation. TPM context manager supports TCG storage protection, remote attestation etc, which greatly enhances the security on trusted virtualization platform. Foundation item: Supported by the National High Technology Research and Development Program of China (2007AA01Z412)