Server active management technology (AMT) assisted secure boot

• US 8,984,265 B2
• Filed: 03/30/2007
• Issued: 03/17/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 03/30/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Intel Corporation
• Original Assignee: Intel Corporation
• Inventors: Vaid, Kushagra, Zimmer, Vincent J., Shekhar, Mrigank
• Primary Examiner(s): Khoshnoodi, Nadia
• Application Number:
  US11/731,526
• Publication Number:
  US 20080244257A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,909 Days
• Field of Search: None
• US Class Current: 713/2
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/575 Secure boot
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 9/0827 involving distinctive intermediate devices or communication paths network architectures or network communication protocols using different networks H04L63/18

Abstract

In some embodiments, the invention involves a system and method relating to secure booting of a platform. In at least one embodiment, the present invention is intended to securely boot a platform using one or more signature keys stored in a secure location on the platform, where access to the signature is by a microcontroller on the platform and the host processor has no direct access to alter the signature key. Other embodiments are described and claimed.

Claims

1. A system for secure boot on a platform, comprising:

a host processor coupled with a firmware memory store to store firmware to boot the host processor; and

a second processor on the platform, the second processor communicatively coupled to a secure area of a memory store, the secure area of the memory store being inaccessible to the firmware and other host processor applications, the second processor to retrieve and validate a signature key from the secure area to control image loading during boot the second processor has network access for an out-of-band connection, even when the host processor has not yet booted, and the second processor to validate the key when the host processor is not even booted using the out-of-band connection by accessing an active directory listing valid keys on a remote server to determine if the signature key is valid or revoked.

2. The system as recited in claim 1, wherein the secure area of memory store resides on the firmware memory store.

3. The system as recited in claim 2, wherein the firmware memory store is flash memory partitioned by a chipset on the platform, the partitioning to make the secure memory area inaccessible to the firmware.

4. The system as recited in claim 1, wherein the firmware is configured to retrieve a signature key from the firmware memory store if the signature key is not available in the secure memory area.

5. The system as recited in claim 1, wherein the firmware will not load or launch the software image if the signature key associated with the software image fails validation.

6. The system as recited in claim 5, wherein validation failure is a result of at least one of an expired certificate, missing certificate or a revoked certificate.

7. The system as recited in claim 1, wherein a signature key comprises at least one of a platform key, protected variable key, or a public key.

8. The system as recited in claim 7, including a hierarchy of signature keys where a higher level key protects a lower level key.

9. The system as recited in claim 8, wherein the platform key is a higher level than a protected variable key which is a higher level than a public key, wherein a public key is associated with each software image to be loaded during boot.

10. The system as recited in claim 1, wherein a certificate validation or online certificate revocation list is retrieved from at least one of a local area network, remote network, location on the public Internet, a location on an intranet, or a machine accessible bulletin board.

11. The system as recited in claim 1, wherein the second processor comprises one of an active management technology microcontroller, a manageability engine controller, or a baseboard management controller.

12. The system of claim 1, wherein the second processor has out-of-band communication capabilities and is configured to validate the signature key and to access at least one of a certificate validation or online certificate revocation list from a remote location via out-of-band communication.