{"id":{"repo_id":"mit","oai_identifier":"oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/152816"},"canonical_url":"https://search.dev.ndltd.org/etd/mit/oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/152816","repository":{"repo_id":"mit","name":"MIT","base_url":"https://dspace.mit.edu/oai/request"},"display":{"title":"Architecting Trust: Building Secure and High-Performance Confidential VMs","abstract":"Recent research in TEE (Trusted Execution Environment) design have focused on the development of confidential VMs — virtual machines completely protected by secure hardware. All major CPU vendors have rolled out support for VM based TEEs — AMD created SEV (2017), Intel created TDX (2020), and ARM launched CCA (2021). Confidential VMs are a quite promising new technology as they are significantly more user-friendly, allow existing applications to run without modifications, and have better performance compared to process-based TEE. However, confidential VMs still face two large design challenges: security and performance. In the first part of this thesis, we propose a secure confidential VM design on the RISC-V platform, which currently has no official confidential VM support. We specifically focus on the task of secure CPU virtualization and build a security monitor that hides the virtual CPU register state from the hypervisor during context switches. To allow the hypervisor to properly handle interrupts and emulate instructions, we summarize a specification listing which registers need to be exposed in specific scenarios. In the second part of this thesis, we aim to improve the network I/O performance of existing confidential VMs. The hardware protections of TEEs create additional I/O overhead in confidential VMs, and Trusted I/O (TIO) is a promising solution to reduce this overhead. However, TIO has several drawbacks — it relies on hardware support from the I/O device and expands the Trusted Computing Base (TCB) to include these TIO devices. Furthermore, TIO devices will not be commercially available for several years. We aim to create a I/O solution that can reach the performance of TIO without relying on TIO devices. In particular, we present Folio, a system for high-performance network I/O compatible with AMD SEV-SNP. Compared to network I/O in a non-TEE VM, Folio performs only a single extra memory-copy of packet data. Our extensive evaluation shows that Folio performs only 6% worse than the ideal TIO solution.","abstract_html":"Recent research in TEE (Trusted Execution Environment) design have focused on the development of confidential VMs — virtual machines completely protected by secure hardware. All major CPU vendors have rolled out support for VM based TEEs — AMD created SEV (2017), Intel created TDX (2020), and ARM launched CCA (2021). Confidential VMs are a quite promising new technology as they are significantly more user-friendly, allow existing applications to run without modifications, and have better performance compared to process-based TEE. However, confidential VMs still face two large design challenges: security and performance. In the first part of this thesis, we propose a secure confidential VM design on the RISC-V platform, which currently has no official confidential VM support. We specifically focus on the task of secure CPU virtualization and build a security monitor that hides the virtual CPU register state from the hypervisor during context switches. To allow the hypervisor to properly handle interrupts and emulate instructions, we summarize a specification listing which registers need to be exposed in specific scenarios. In the second part of this thesis, we aim to improve the network I/O performance of existing confidential VMs. The hardware protections of TEEs create additional I/O overhead in confidential VMs, and Trusted I/O (TIO) is a promising solution to reduce this overhead. However, TIO has several drawbacks — it relies on hardware support from the I/O device and expands the Trusted Computing Base (TCB) to include these TIO devices. Furthermore, TIO devices will not be commercially available for several years. We aim to create a I/O solution that can reach the performance of TIO without relying on TIO devices. In particular, we present Folio, a system for high-performance network I/O compatible with AMD SEV-SNP. Compared to network I/O in a non-TEE VM, Folio performs only a single extra memory-copy of packet data. Our extensive evaluation shows that Folio performs only 6% worse than the ideal TIO solution.","abstract_has_math":false,"creators":["Srivastava, Shashvat"],"institution":"Massachusetts Institute of Technology","degree_name":"Master","degree_level":null,"degree_discipline":null,"degree_department":"Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 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All major CPU vendors have rolled out support for VM based TEEs — AMD created SEV (2017), Intel created TDX (2020), and ARM launched CCA (2021). Confidential VMs are a quite promising new technology as they are significantly more user-friendly, allow existing applications to run without modifications, and have better performance compared to process-based TEE. However, confidential VMs still face two large design challenges: security and performance. In the first part of this thesis, we propose a secure confidential VM design on the RISC-V platform, which currently has no official confidential VM support. We specifically focus on the task of secure CPU virtualization and build a security monitor that hides the virtual CPU register state from the hypervisor during context switches. To allow the hypervisor to properly handle interrupts and emulate instructions, we summarize a specification listing which registers need to be exposed in specific scenarios. In the second part of this thesis, we aim to improve the network I/O performance of existing confidential VMs. The hardware protections of TEEs create additional I/O overhead in confidential VMs, and Trusted I/O (TIO) is a promising solution to reduce this overhead. However, TIO has several drawbacks — it relies on hardware support from the I/O device and expands the Trusted Computing Base (TCB) to include these TIO devices. Furthermore, TIO devices will not be commercially available for several years. We aim to create a I/O solution that can reach the performance of TIO without relying on TIO devices. In particular, we present Folio, a system for high-performance network I/O compatible with AMD SEV-SNP. Compared to network I/O in a non-TEE VM, Folio performs only a single extra memory-copy of packet data. Our extensive evaluation shows that Folio performs only 6% worse than the ideal TIO solution."]},{"key":"dc:description.degree","label":"Dc Description Degree","values":["M.Eng."]},{"key":"dc:title","label":"Title","values":["Architecting Trust: Building Secure and High-Performance Confidential VMs"]}]}],"canonical_facts":{"dc:contributor.advisor":["Yan, Mengjia"],"dc:contributor.department":["Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science"],"dc:creator":["Srivastava, Shashvat"],"dc:date.accessioned":["2023-11-02T20:18:38Z"],"dc:date.available":["2023-11-02T20:18:38Z"],"dc:date.issued":["2023-09"],"dc:description.abstract":["Recent research in TEE (Trusted Execution Environment) design have focused on the development of confidential VMs — virtual machines completely protected by secure hardware. All major CPU vendors have rolled out support for VM based TEEs — AMD created SEV (2017), Intel created TDX (2020), and ARM launched CCA (2021). Confidential VMs are a quite promising new technology as they are significantly more user-friendly, allow existing applications to run without modifications, and have better performance compared to process-based TEE. However, confidential VMs still face two large design challenges: security and performance. In the first part of this thesis, we propose a secure confidential VM design on the RISC-V platform, which currently has no official confidential VM support. We specifically focus on the task of secure CPU virtualization and build a security monitor that hides the virtual CPU register state from the hypervisor during context switches. To allow the hypervisor to properly handle interrupts and emulate instructions, we summarize a specification listing which registers need to be exposed in specific scenarios. In the second part of this thesis, we aim to improve the network I/O performance of existing confidential VMs. The hardware protections of TEEs create additional I/O overhead in confidential VMs, and Trusted I/O (TIO) is a promising solution to reduce this overhead. However, TIO has several drawbacks — it relies on hardware support from the I/O device and expands the Trusted Computing Base (TCB) to include these TIO devices. Furthermore, TIO devices will not be commercially available for several years. We aim to create a I/O solution that can reach the performance of TIO without relying on TIO devices. In particular, we present Folio, a system for high-performance network I/O compatible with AMD SEV-SNP. Compared to network I/O in a non-TEE VM, Folio performs only a single extra memory-copy of packet data. Our extensive evaluation shows that Folio performs only 6% worse than the ideal TIO solution."],"dc:description.degree":["M.Eng."],"dc:identifier.uri":["https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/152816"],"dc:publisher":["Massachusetts Institute of Technology"],"dc:rights":["In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted","Copyright retained by author(s)"],"dc:rights.uri":["https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-EDU/1.0/"],"dc:title":["Architecting Trust: Building Secure and High-Performance Confidential VMs"],"dc:type":["Thesis"],"thesis:degree_name":["Master","Master of Engineering in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science"]},"updated_at":"2026-07-22T22:21:00Z"}