Patent ID: 9270650
Filing Date: 2016-02-23
CPC Classification: H04L

Claim Text:
1. A system for providing a secure subnet management agent (SMA) in an InfiniBand (IB) fabric having a fabric administrator, the system comprising: a host channel adapter (HCA) installed in a host system, the HCA comprising an embedded firmware; a secure subnet management agent (SMA) implemented in the embedded firmware of the HCA; wherein the SMA is associated with a management key, and wherein a host administrator and software with root access to the host system are prevented from observing the management key unless endorsed by the fabric administrator; wherein the HCA comprises a protection scheme which utilizes a HCA password to prevent the host administrator of the host system and software with root access to the host system from changing the embedded firmware of the HCA and modifying one or more states associated with the SMA without presenting the HCA password; an upgrade control executable which comprises an encrypted version of the HCA password bundled with a HCA firmware update; wherein the upgrade control executable is configured to enable the host administrator of the host to upgrade the embedded firmware of the HCA using the HCA firmware update and the encrypted version of the HCA password; and wherein the system further comprises a password mechanism, which enables the fabric administrator to upgrade the embedded firmware of the HCA without having root access to the host system.