Extending OpenPOWER Boot Security to Guests - George Wilson, IBM
Channel: The Linux Foundation
Date: 01/09/2018

Extending OpenPOWER Boot Security to Guests - George Wilson, IBM

The KVM and PowerVM guest environments are significantly different from the OpenPOWER host environment: the boot sequence is shorter, the firmware components are simpler, and the bootloader is entirely replaced. A secure boot design must accommodate the dissimilarities and, consequently, the solution for the OpenPOWER host is not directly applicable to guests. Yet, much as for the host case, existing open source elements can help solve the problem of booting guest OSs securely. This talk follows last year's OpenPOWER host secure boot talk and discusses possible design alternatives that reuse open source code to bring OS boot security improvements to KVM on OpenPOWER and PowerVM guests.

About George Wilson
George Wilson is a security architect and security development team lead in IBM's Linux Technology Center. Since joining the LTC in 2004, he has led IBM's Linux security certifications and continued development and product exploitation of open source security technology including cryptographic coprocessor support, Trusted Computing, and Mandatory Access Control. Prior to the LTC, he was a software developer for various IBM products for 15 years. He has spoken at internal IBM conferences, LinuxCon, and last year at LSS. He holds a BS CS from Louisiana State University.