Trusted Virtual Appliance Isolation via Hypervisor Segmentation
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing systems for securely delivering protected content over networks face challenges in ensuring content protection and authorization, as they often rely on user-owned devices with multiple applications, making it difficult to maintain security and manage content delivery effectively.
Innovation Solution
A system and method that automatically provision a trusted virtual machine (VM) on consumer-owned devices, isolating it from other applications and using a hypervisor to ensure exclusive memory and storage, enabling secure communication of protected content through unique encoding and DRM keys.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If a trusted virtual machine is isolated using a hypervisor with exclusive memory and storage assignment, then content protection and security are improved, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system segments the consumer-owned device into isolated virtual environments using a hypervisor. The trusted virtual machine is separated from other applications through virtual memory and storage assignment, creating distinct security domains. This segmentation allows content protection to be enforced in the VM without requiring complete system redesign, thus improving reliability while managing complexity through modular isolation.
Solution Approach 2:
The hypervisor acts as an intermediary layer between the trusted virtual machine and the host operating system. It manages memory and storage allocation, controlling access between the VM and physical resources. This intermediary enables secure content protection by mediating all resource access, preventing direct interference from other applications, while abstracting the complexity of resource management from both the VM and host systems.
2Productivity
If automatic provisioning of trusted VM is implemented without human interaction, then productivity and ease of operation are improved, but reliability may worsen due to automated security credential distribution
Solution Approach 1:
Security credentials and trust relationships are established in advance during VM creation and provisioning. The hypervisor pre-configures isolated memory and storage spaces, and the trusted VM is pre-loaded with necessary security credentials before deployment. This preliminary setup ensures that when the VM is automatically provisioned, the security framework is already in place, maintaining reliability while enabling fast automated deployment.
Solution Approach 2:
The system enables self-service provisioning where the hypervisor and trusted VM automatically manage their own security credentials and resource allocation without human intervention. The VM self-configures within the isolated environment, and the hypervisor automatically enforces security policies. This self-service mechanism maintains security integrity while achieving rapid automated provisioning, as the system uses pre-established trust relationships to guide the process.
Data Source
AI summary
A system and method to automatically provision a trusted virtual appliance (VA) (which may include one or more virtual machines (VM)) for installation onto a consumer-owned acceptable device (COAD) where the system and method may create a provision the VA for the COAD without human interaction and a COAD may install a received trusted VA without human interaction, and the VM of a VA may operate independently of other applications on the COAD other than a VM supervisory program such as a hypervisor.