Abstract:
Embodiments of apparatuses, articles, methods, and systems for secure vault service for software components within an execution environment are generally described herein. An embodiment includes the ability for a Virtual Machine Monitor, Operating System Monitor, or other underlying platform capability to restrict memory regions for access only by specifically authenticated, authorized and verified software components, even when part of an otherwise compromised operating system environment. The underlying platform to lock and unlock secrets on behalf of the authenticated/authorized/verified software component provided in protected memory regions only accessible to the authenticated/authorized/verified software component. Other embodiments may be described and claimed.

Description:
CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS 
     This application is related to U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/173,851, filed on Jun. 30, 2005 and titled “SIGNED MANIFEST FOR RUN-TIME VERIFICATION OF SOFTWARE PROGRAM IDENTITY AND INTEGRITY”; U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/322,669, filed on Dec. 30, 2005 and titled “IDENTIFIER ASSOCIATED WITH MEMORY LOCATIONS FOR MANAGING MEMORY ACCESSES”; and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/395,488, filed on Mar. 30, 2006 and titled “INTRA-PARTITIONING OF SOFTWARE COMPONENTS WITHIN AN EXECUTION ENVIRONMENT”, all of which are incorporated herein by reference. 
     BACKGROUND 
     Software programs are subject to complex and evolving attacks by malware seeking to gain control of computer systems. These attacks can take on a variety of different forms ranging from attempts to crash the software program to subversion of the program for alternate purposes. Additionally, it is particularly difficult to protect the run-time data of the program. The protection of this run-time data is especially important when it involves the program&#39;s secrets and configuration information or digital rights protection keying material needed by applications to protect content in main memory and while in transit. 
    
    
     
       BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS 
       Embodiments of the invention are illustrated by way of example and not by way of limitation in the figures of the accompanying drawings, in which like references indicate similar elements and in which: 
         FIG. 1  illustrates a platform to provide secure vault service for software components within an execution environment, in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention; 
         FIG. 2  illustrates a platform utilizing parallel execution environments, in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention; 
         FIG. 3  illustrates operational phases of secure vault service for software components within an execution environment, in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention; 
         FIG. 4  illustrates intra-partitioning of portions of a component to provide secure vault service in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention. 
         FIG. 5  illustrates operational phases of lock, service, in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention; and 
         FIG. 6  illustrates operational phases of unlock service, in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention. 
     
    
    
     DETAILED DESCRIPTION 
     Embodiments of the present invention may provide a method, apparatus, and system for secure vault service for software components within an execution environment on a platform. In embodiments, secure vault service helps to protect data in memory during both run-time and while being stored offline from other applications and from other components (such as operating system components or the operating system itself). 
     Various embodiments may comprise one or more elements. An element may comprise any structure arranged to perform certain operations. Each element may be implemented as hardware, software, or any combination thereof, as desired for a given set of design parameters or performance constraints. Although an embodiment may be described with a limited number of elements in a certain topology by way of example, the embodiment may include more or less elements in alternate topologies as desired for a given implementation. It is worthy to note that any reference to “one embodiment” or “an embodiment” means that a particular feature, structure, or characteristic described in connection with the embodiment is included in at least one embodiment. The appearances of the phrase “in one embodiment” in various places in the specification are not necessarily all referring to the same embodiment. 
       FIG. 1  illustrates a platform  100  to provide for secure vault service for software components within an execution environment, in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention. The platform  100  may have an execution environment  104 , which may be the domain of an executing operating system (OS)  108 . The OS  108  may be a component configured to execute and control general operation of other components within the execution environment  104 , such as the software component  112 , subject to intra-partition memory access protections provided to selected components by an underlying management module  116 , to be discussed in further detail below. 
     In some embodiments, the component  112  may be a supervisory-level component, e.g., a kernel component. In various embodiments, a kernel component may be services (e.g., loader, scheduler, memory manager, etc.), extensions/drivers (e.g., for a network card, a universal serial bus (USB) interface, a disk drive, etc.), or a service-driver hybrid (e.g., intrusion detectors to watch execution of code). Alternatively, in embodiments, the component  112  may be an application process, thread, or other user space program, service or library. 
     As used herein, the term “component” is intended to refer to programming logic and associated data that may be employed to obtain a desired outcome. The term component may be synonymous with “module” or “agent” and may refer to programming logic that may be embodied in hardware or firmware, or in a collection of software instructions, possibly having entry and exit points, written in a programming language, such as, for example, C++, Intel Architecture 32 bit (IA-32) executable code, etc. 
     A software component may be compiled and linked into an executable program, or installed in a dynamic link library, or may be written in an interpretive language such as BASIC. It will be appreciated that software components may be callable from other components or from themselves, and/or may be invoked in response to detected events or interrupts. Software instructions may be provided in a machine accessible medium, which when accessed, may result in a machine performing operations or executions described in conjunction with components of embodiments of the present invention. Machine accessible medium may be firmware, e.g., an electrically erasable programmable read-only memory (EEPROM), or other recordable/non-recordable medium, e.g., read-only memory (ROM), random access memory (RAM), magnetic disk storage, optical disk storage, etc. It will be further appreciated that hardware components may be comprised of connected logic units, such as gates and flip-flops, and/or may be comprised of programmable units, such as programmable gate arrays or processors. In some embodiments, the components described herein are implemented as software modules, but nonetheless may be represented in hardware or firmware. Furthermore, although only a given number of discrete software/hardware components may be illustrated and/or described, such components may nonetheless be represented by additional components or fewer components without departing from the spirit and scope of embodiments of the invention. 
     In addition to intra-partitioning selected components of the execution environment  104 , the management module  116  may arbitrate general component access to hardware resources  118  such as one or more processor(s)  120 , network interface controller (NIC)  124 , storage  128 , and/or memory  132 . 
     The processor(s)  120  may execute programming instructions of components of the platform  100 . The processor(s)  120  may be single and/or multiple-core processor(s), controller(s), application specific integrated circuit(s) (ASIC(s)), etc. 
     In an embodiment storage  128  may represent non-volatile storage to store persistent content to be used for the execution of the components on the platform  100 , such as, but not limited to, operating system(s), program files, configuration files, etc. In an embodiment, storage  128  may include stored content  136 , which may represent the persistent store of source content for the component  112 . The persistent store of source content may include, e.g., executable code store that may have executable files and/or code segments, links to other routines (e.g., a call to a dynamic linked library (DLL)), a data segment, etc. 
     In various embodiments, storage  128  may include integrated and/or peripheral storage devices, such as, but not limited to, disks and associated drives (e.g., magnetic, optical), universal serial bus (USB) storage devices and associated ports, flash memory, ROM, non-volatile semiconductor devices, etc. 
     In various embodiments, storage  128  may be a storage resource physically part of the platform  100  or it may be accessible by, but not necessarily a part of, the platform  100 . For example, the storage  128  may be accessed by the platform  100  over a network  140  via the network interface controller  124 . 
     Upon a load request, e.g., from a loading component or agent of the OS  108 , the management module  116  and/or the OS  108  may load the stored content  136  from storage  128  into memory  132  as active content  144  for operation of the component  112  in the execution environment  104 . 
     In various embodiments, the memory  132  may be volatile storage to provide active content for operation of components on the platform  100 . In various embodiments, the memory  132  may include RAM, dynamic RAM (DRAM), static RAM (SRAM), synchronous DRAM (SDRAM), dual-data rate RAM (DDRRAM), cache, etc. 
     In some embodiments, the memory  132  may organize content stored therein into a number of groups of memory locations. These organizational groups, which may be fixed and/or variable sized, may facilitate virtual memory management. The groups of memory locations may be pages, segments, or a combination thereof. 
     A virtual memory utilizing paging may facilitate the emulation of a large logical/linear address space with a smaller physical memory page. Therefore, the execution environment  104  may provide a virtual execution environment in which the components may operate, which may then be mapped into physical pages of the memory  132 . Page tables maintained by the OS  108  and/or management module  116  may map the logical/linear addresses provided by components of the execution environment  104  to physical address of the memory  132 . More details of the implementation of paging, and in particular paging with respect to intra-partitioning of components, may be given below in accordance with embodiments of this invention. 
     In various embodiments, the component  112 , or portions thereof, may be selected for intra-partitioning to support secure vault services. Here, the management module  116  may identify and partition off portions of the component  112  to control access by the OS  108  or other components to the component  112 . Partitioned portions may include any portion, up to all, of the particular component. A partitioned portion may be sequestered, either physically or virtually, from other components within the same execution environment, such that intra-execution environment accesses may be monitored and restricted, if necessary, by the underlying platform. Intra-partitioning may facilitate insulation of, e.g., component  112  from the OS  108 , without requiring that the component  112  operate in an entirely separate execution environment, with a separate OS. Intra-partitioning may also afford the component  112  a level of protection from other components, even those of similar or higher privilege levels, within the execution environment  104  that may be compromised in some manner, e.g., by malware, rootkits, critical runtime failures, etc. Embodiments of this invention may provide for this protection and secure vault services while still allowing permitted interactions between the component  112  and other components, e.g., the OS  108 , of the execution environment  104 . Controlling access by the OS  108  to the component  112  may include various levels of access restrictions, as will be discussed below in further detail. 
     In various embodiments, intra-partitioning of components to support secure vault services within an execution environment may be useful in a platform having multiple, execution environments, such as virtual machines operating in a virtualization technology (VT) enabled platform. In such an embodiment, a management module may include, or be a part of, a virtual machine monitor (VMM). 
       FIG. 2  illustrates a platform  200  utilizing virtualization to provide parallel execution environments in accordance with an embodiment of this invention. In various embodiments, the platform  200  may be similar to, and substantially interchangeable with, the platform  100 . Furthermore, elements described below may be similar to, and substantially interchangeable with, like-named elements described above, and vice versa. 
     In this embodiment a management module, e.g., virtual machine monitor (VMM)  204 , on the platform  200  may present multiple abstractions and/or views of the platform hardware  208 , e.g., one or more processor(s)  212 , network interface controller (NIC)  216 , storage  220 , and/or memory  224 , to the one or more independently operating execution environments, or “virtual machines (VMs),” e.g., guest VM  228  and auxiliary VM  232 . The auxiliary VM  232  may be configured to execute code independently and securely isolated from the guest VM  228  and may prevent components of the guest VM  228  from performing operations that would alter, modify, read, or otherwise affect the components of the auxiliary VM  232 . While the platform  200  shows two VMs, other embodiments may employ any number of VMs. 
     The components operating in the guest VM  228  and auxiliary VM  232  may each operate as if they were running on a dedicated computer rather than a virtual machine. That is, components operating in the guest VM  228  and auxiliary VM  232  may each expect to control various events and have complete access to hardware  208 . The VMM  204  may manage VM access to the hardware  208 . The VMM  204  may be implemented in software (e.g., as a stand-alone program and/or a component of a host operating system), hardware, firmware, and/or any combination thereof. 
     The guest VM  228  may include an OS  236  and component  240 . Upon a designated event, the VMM  204  may identify and partition off portions of the component  240  to control access to the partitioned portions by the OS  236  or other components. One or more of these partitioned portions may be used to represent a secure vault. In various embodiments, a designated event may be when stored content  244  is loaded from storage  220  to memory  224 , as active content  248  or when the component  240  requests secure vault services. However, in various embodiments, other designated events may be additionally/alternatively used. 
     Intra-partition based protections to provide secure vault service may be provided to component  240  as described in  FIG. 3  in accordance with an embodiment of this invention. Operational phases shown in  FIG. 3  may be referenced by numerals within parentheses. Referring to  FIG. 3 , the component  240  may register with the VMM  204 , and more particularly, with an integrity services module (ISM)  252  of the VMM  204  for protection (block  302 ). At this time, the component  240  may also request for secure vault services. In various embodiments, the registration may take place upon an occurrence of a registration event, e.g., loading of the active content  248  into memory  224 , periodically, and/or in some other event-driven manner. In various embodiments, the registration may be initiated by the component  240 , another component within the VM  228 , e.g., the OS  236 , the VMM  204 , or a component of the VM  232 . 
     Upon receiving the registration, the ISM  252  may cooperate with an integrity measurement module (IMM)  256  operating in the VM  232  to authenticate and verify the integrity of the component  240  (block  304 ). Authentication and verification of the integrity of the component  240  may help to prevent unauthorized modification and/or malicious termination, and may ensure that only recognized components may be afforded protection as defined by an administrator, user or other policy. The IMM  256  may operate in the VM domain  232  in the context of an OS  260 , or in separate hardware and may, therefore, be largely independent of OS  236 . By running outside of the context of the VM  228 , the IMM  256  may have accurate and dependable memory measurement capabilities that may not be present, or possibly compromised, in the context of the OS  236 . 
     The IMM  256  may provide the ISM  252  a response to the verification request such as pass, fail, pass w/qualification, fail w/qualification, etc. In various embodiments, qualifications may reflect degrees of integrity verification between pass and fail. The IMM  256  effectively identifies or authenticates the component and its data and assures that it is of the expected, correct form in memory. 
     In some embodiments, the active content  248  may include an integrity manifest, which may be a collection of information to be used in the verification of the integrity of the component  240 . In various embodiments, the integrity manifest may include one or more integrity check values and/or relocation fix-up locations, covering the stored content  244 , e.g., code store and/or static and/or configuration settings/data. The IMM  256  may access the integrity manifest from the active content  248  and verify that the component  240  corresponds, in total or in part, to the integrity manifest. The IMM  256  may verify the authenticity of the integrity manifest itself verifying a cryptographic signature over the integrity manifest structure to assure it is unaltered from its correct form. A comparison may be done of the images through, e.g., a byte-by-byte analysis or through analysis of cryptographic hashes. 
     In various embodiments, the IMM  256  may search for the active content  248  directly in the memory  224 , e.g., through a direct memory access (DMA) or direct physical memory access. In various embodiments, the linear address of the component  240  may be provided to the IMM  256 , e.g., through the ISM  252 , and the IMM  256  may perform a virtual-to-physical mapping to identity the physical memory locations of the active content  248 . In an embodiment, the VMM  204  may provide special interfaces to IMM  256  to provide access to active content  248 . 
     In various embodiments, integrity measurement of the active content  248  may be conducted upon the initial registration, periodically, and/or in some other event-driven manner while the component  240  is executing (e.g., request for lock service or unlock service of the secure vault). Integrity measurement upon initial registration request or secure vault services request may help to determine that the initial state of the active content  248  and/or stored content  244  is as expected based on the state of the content at the time it was manufactured, or loaded last. The periodic or event-driven integrity measurements may help to detect attacks that inappropriately change the protected attributes of the active content  248  and/or stored content  244 . 
     Further details of integrity measurements of components are described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/173,851, filed Jun. 30, 2005, referred to and incorporated above. 
     The ISM  252  may receive a response from IMM  256  reflecting verification of integrity and location in memory of the active content  248  (block  306 ). If the verification fails, the ISM  252  denies the request and may trigger an alert (block  308 ). If the verification passes, the ISM  252  may cooperate with a memory manager  264  to intra-partition portions of the component  240  for secure vault services (block  310 ). Here, protection is established around a vault or hidden pages in memory so they may only be accessed by the verified component and/or around the entirety of the component itself. 
     While  FIG. 2  illustrates execution environments being virtual partitions, other embodiments may provide different execution environments through other mechanisms, e.g., using a service processor, protected execution mode (such as System Management Mode SMM or Secure Execution Mode SMX, for example) and/or an embedded microcontroller. In various embodiments, an auxiliary environment may be partitioned from a host environment via a variety of different types of partitions, including a virtualized partition (e.g., a virtual machine in a Virtualization Technology (VT) scheme), as shown above, and/or an entirely separate hardware partition (e.g., utilizing Active Management Technologies (AMT), “Manageability Engine” (ME), Platform Resource Layer (PRL) using sequestered platform resources. System Management Mode (SMM), and/or other comparable or similar technologies). In various embodiments, a VT platform may also be used to implement AMT, ME, and PRL technologies. 
       FIG. 4  illustrates intra-partitioning of portions of the component  240  to support secure vault services in accordance with an embodiment of this invention. In this embodiment, the OS  236  may create a guest page table (GPT)  404  in an OS domain  408  mapping linear addresses of components executing in the VM  228  to physical addresses, or page frames. Component  240  may be set to occupy the 2 nd  through 5 th  page table entries (PTEs), which refer to page frames having active content  248 , e.g., PF 2 -PF 5 . As is the case in VT platforms, the VMM  204  may monitor and trap register pointer (e.g., CR3) changes. When OS  236  creates GPT  404  and provides a CR3 value  410  pointing to the GPT  404 , the VMM  204  may trap on the CR3 change, create an active page table (APT)  412  (which may be a duplicate or shadow copy of the GPT  404 ) in the VMM domain  416 , and change the CR3 value  410  to value  420  pointing to the APT  412 . In this way, the VMM  204  can coordinate accesses to the memory  224  from a number of VMs, e.g., VM  228  and VM  232 . 
     In this embodiment, the VMM  204  may also create a protected page table (PPT)  424 . The VMM  204  may copy the page frames having the active content  248 , e.g., PF 2 -PF 5 , into the PPT  424  and assign the page table entries (PTEs) that do not refer to those page frames, e.g., 1 st  PTE and 6 st  PTE, with access characteristics  428  to cause a page fault upon execution. Similarly the APT page mappings for the active content (e.g. 2 nd  through the 4 th  PTE corresponding to PF 2 -PF 4 ) will have access characteristics to cause a page fault on execution from the active (or OS&#39;s) domain. In various embodiments, the access characteristics  428  may be ‘not present,’ ‘execute disabled,’ and/or read-only. In an embodiment, the access characteristics  428  may be ‘not present’ or a combination of ‘execute disable’ and read-only to prevent unauthorized modifications to the active content  248  from the VM  228 . In various embodiments, the setting of the access characteristics  428  may be done by the VMM  204 , requested by the authenticated/verified component  240 , the IMM  256 , and/or by hardware. 
     The VMM  204  may assign the PTEs of the APT  412  that refer to page frames having partitioned portions of the component  240 , e.g., 2 nd  PTE-4 th  PTE, with access characteristics  428 . It may be noted that some page frames, e.g., PF 5 , may be shared between the partitioned and non-partitioned elements. Therefore, in an embodiment the 5 th  PTE may not have access characteristics  428  set in either APT  412  or PPT  424 . 
     In this embodiment, execution flow between the APT  412  and PPT  424  may be managed as follows. Initially, CR3 may have value  420  pointing to APT  412  representing the execution of the guest operating system. An execution instruction pointer (EIP) may start with the 1 st  PTE of the APT  412  and, upon an attempted access of the 2 nd  PTE, may cause a page fault due to the access characteristics  428 . The VMM  204  may take control, and change CR3 from value  420  to value  432 , pointing to the PPT  424 . The EIP may resume operation at the 2 nd  PTE of the PPT  424 , which may be a partitioned element. The EIP may execute through the 3 rd  PTE, the 4 th  PTE and the 5 th  PTE. When the EIP attempts to access the 6 th  PTE, the access characteristics  428  may cause another page fault and the VMM  204  may switch the CR3 back to value  420 , for access to the 6 th  PTE from the APT  412 . 
     In some embodiments, the VMM  204  may monitor the execution flow between the APT  412  and PPT  424  to verify that the points the EIP enters and/or exits the PPT  424  are as expected according to the integrity manifest for the component  240  or other policy. Verification that the EIP jumps into the PPT  424  at valid entry points and/or jumps out of the PPT  424  at valid exit points, could facilitate a determination that the component  240  and/or other components in the VM  228  are operating correctly. If the entry/exit point is not as expected, the VMM  204  may determine that the access attempt to the partitioned component  240  is unauthorized and may raise an exception, which in various embodiments could include rejecting the attempted access, redirecting the access attempt to a different or NULL memory region, reporting the rejected access attempt to the OS  236  (for example, by injecting an invalid instruction exception), triggering an interrupt, notifying a separate VM, sending a network notification, and/or causing a halt of the OS  236  as controlled by the VMM). 
     In various embodiments, the valid entry and/or exit points may be predetermined, e.g., at the time the component  240  is compiled, and/or may be dynamic. A dynamic entry and/or exit point may be created, e.g., when an interrupt occurs. For example, an interrupt may occur when the EIP is at the 3 rd  PTE of the PPT  424 , the VMM  204  may gain control, verify that the interrupt is authentic, and record the EIP value, processor register values, and call stack information for use as a dynamic exit point. The dynamic exit point may then serve as a valid entry point upon reentry to the partitioned elements of the PPT  424 . Note that sensitive data in processor registers and the call stack may be stored as part of the dynamic exit point by the VMM  204  and cleaned/deleted before turning control back to the OS via the interrupt handler. This sensitive data may be restored by the VMM  204  when the corresponding dynamic entry point is executed on returning from the interrupt. 
     Additionally, in some embodiments an execution state (e.g., a stack state and/or a processor state, e.g., register values) may be recorded at an exit and verified upon reentry. This may provide some assurance that an unauthorized alteration/modification did not occur. 
     In some embodiments data for an execution state verification may include a copy of the entire state or an integrity check value (ICV) calculation. An ICV may be calculated on, for example, the in parameters of a stack frame by setting the out parameters to default values. Likewise, an ICV may be calculated on the out parameters by setting the in parameters to default values. 
     If the entry/exit point and/or the execution state verification fail the VMM  204  may issue an exception to the access attempt. 
     Furthermore, in some embodiments, the VMM  204  may verify that the element calling the partitioned elements (e.g., secure vault or hidden pages), e.g., PF 2 -PF 4 , is permitted to access them. For example, the VMM  204  may receive a request from a component to access the partitioned elements. The VMM  204  may identify the component, reference access permissions associated with the partitioned elements, and raise an exception if the access permissions do not permit the identified component to access the partitioned elements. 
     It way be noted that the page tables shown and described in embodiments of this invention may be simplified for clarity of discussion. In various embodiments of this invention page tables may include multiple levels of indirection and thousands or even millions of entries. Furthermore, in various embodiments entries at different levels may be identified differently than as identified in discussions herein. For example, on an IA-32 platform, the top level may be referred to as a page directory entry (PDE), while the bottom entry may be referred to as a page table entry (PTE). Extended or Nested Page Tables for protection, remapping, and/or segmentation of guest physical memory may also be used. The intra-partitioning discussed herein may be applied to any of these variations/extensions in accordance with embodiments of this invention. 
     Further embodiments of intra-partitioning of portions of the component  240  are described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/395,488, filed on Mar. 30, 2006, referenced above. 
     Lock service for the secure vault may be provided to the component  240  as described in  FIG. 5 , in accordance with an embodiment of this invention. Operational phases shown in  FIG. 5  may be referenced by numerals within parentheses. Referring to  FIG. 5 , the component  240  requests lock service by passing a data blob to the VMM  204  to be locked in the vault (or hidden pages) belonging to the PPT of component  240  (block  502 ). Note that in embodiments, the data could be code too. In embodiments, the component  240  may make the request to the VMM  204  via a hypercall. Once locked in the vault, the data blob will be hidden or not accessible by other software in the platform. In embodiments, the secure vault services module  253  ( FIG. 2 ) of the VMM  204  may be incorporated into the VMM  204  to perform the secure vault services described herein. 
     The integrity of the component  240  is verified (block  504 ), as was described above with reference to block  304  of  FIG. 3 . The ISM  252  may receive a response from IMM  256  reflecting verification of integrity of the active content  248  (block  506 ). If the verification fails, the ISM  252  denies the request and may trigger an alert (block  508 ). If the verification passes, the VMM  204  derives a unique key for the vault (block  510 ). In embodiments, the VMM  204  derives the unique key for the vault from its own key or keys via a one-way cryptographic operation. The VMM  204  can obtain its key from the trusted platform module (TPM) as part of the measured secure boot process that loaded the VMM  204 . When the TPM ascertains authenticity and integrity of the loaded VMM  204 , the TPM may release its key to the VMM  204 . Thus, the basis for trust can be extended from a measured VMM  204  directly to applications or components running one, two or more layers removed even in a non-trusted, unmeasured, or even compromised operating system. 
     The VMM  204  then encrypts the data blob (block  512 ). In embodiments, the VMM  204  encrypts the data blob using its own secret key. The VMM  204  then stores or places the encrypted data blob in the vault (block  514 ). 
     The VMM  204  computes a cryptographic message authentication code (MAC) of the data blob and of a token (block  516 ). In embodiments, MAC field in the token is set to all zeros. In embodiments, a data structure may be utilized that maps tokens to components or agents. Here, one token is assigned to each component and the data structure represents a mapping between the token and the data blob key for the particular component. The data blob may also identify the owning component based on the integrity manifest identifier. This information too would be in the computation of the MAC. 
     The VMM  204  places the computed MAC in the token ( 518 ). The VMM  204  then sends the token to the component  240 , including a reference to the manifest for verification when unlocking the vault in the future to gain access to the data blob (block  520 ). The locked content may then be used or stored by the component  240 , where the clear text can be inaccessible and may not be modified by the OS or other components. 
     Unlock service for the secure vault may be provided to the component  240  as described in  FIG. 6  in accordance with an embodiment of this invention. Operational phases shown in  FIG. 6  may be referenced by numerals within parentheses. Referring to  FIG. 6 , the component  240  requests unlock service for the vault by passing the encrypted data blob and token to the VMM  204  (block  602 ). In embodiments, the component  240  may make the request to the VMM  204  via a hypercall. 
     The integrity of the component  240  is verified (block  604 ), as was described above with reference to block  304  of  FIG. 3 . The ISM  252  may receive a response from IMM  256  reflecting verification of integrity of the active content  248  (block  606 ). If the verification failed, the ISM  252  denies the request and may trigger an alert (block  608 ). If the verification passes, the VMM  204  verifies the integrity of the MAC in the token (block  610 ). Here, the VMM  204  uses its own secret key to prove the token references specified component&#39;s manifest (block  612 ). If the verification fails, the ISM  252  denies the request and may trigger an alert (block  608 ). If the verification passes, the VMM  204  matches the secret data blob (block  614 ). 
     The VMM  204  decrypts the data blob using information in the token and the VMM&#39;s secret key (block  616 ). The VMM  204  places the unencrypted data blob in the vault (block  618 ). The component  240  can now access the clear text data in the vault (block  620 ). 
     In embodiments, a random value or nonce may be part of the encrypted data blob. A nonce is generally not a replay prevention mechanism. Replay protection may be needed if user can back reverse, but may not be required if there is a source of trusted time that can be provided to the component  240  for incorporation in the data blob. Here, in embodiments, the component  240  may be responsible for detecting back reverses and to use the TPM, clock, or remote entity if replay is a concern. 
     In embodiments, instead of encrypting the data, the token may be used to provide a MAC of the unencrypted data and manifest reference using the VMM  204  secret key to validate the integrity of the information to the component  240  in the future. Here, the same lock and unlock procedure is performed, but the integrity check value is simply calculated on the lock and verified on the unlock operation without encrypting or decrypting the clear text data. In embodiments, for MAC generation, an authenticated encryption mode may be used that both encrypts the data and generates the MAC, or derives a second (authentication key) and applies a function such as a keyed-hashed message authentication code (HMAC) based on SHA256, for example. 
     Embodiments may also allow content to be locked by one component or set of components yet to be unlocked by another component or set of components. In one embodiment, this is achieved by the locking component identifying to the VMM  204  the destination component that can unlock the data blob via its integrity manifest identifier (or set of identifiers). These identifiers are also integrity protected via the MAC during the lock procedure and verified by the VMM  204  during the unlock procedure to assure that only the targeted destination component(s) may access or modify the content. Such an embodiment may specify both the source and destination integrity manifest identifiers to assure that a protocol may be in place so the destination may determine the component that was source of the locked content was likewise verified by the VMM  204  as the authentic source of the content prior to the data being locked. 
     Embodiments of the invention may be used for a variety of applications (e.g., security and networking applications) and components (e.g., OS components) to store their secrets at runtime, to make their configuration and secrets secure from attack and to allow these components to reliably attest to the thrust worthiness of the system in the network. In embodiments, applications may utilize the invention to protect keys and configuration information both at runtime and while stored offline so only the properly identified components or agents can access their corresponding secrets. In embodiments, content protection applications can likewise persist their keying material rendering it inaccessible even if the underlying OS is compromised in some fundamental way, and preventing content from being accessed from compromised components. Cryptographic algorithms used for locking and unlocking the data blob may be symmetric, asymmetric or any combination thereof. 
     Various embodiments may be implemented using hardware elements, software elements, or a combination of both. Examples of hardware elements may include processors, microprocessors, circuits, circuit elements (e.g., transistors, resistors, capacitors, inductors, and so forth), integrated circuits, application specific integrated circuits (ASIC), programmable logic devices (PLD), digital signal processors (DSP), field programmable gate array (FPGA), logic gates, registers, semiconductor device, chips, microchips, chip sets, and so forth. Examples of software may include software components, programs, applications, computer programs, application programs, system programs, machine programs, operating system software, middleware, firmware, software modules, routines, subroutines, functions, methods, procedures, software interfaces, application program interfaces (API), instruction sets, computing code, computer code, code segments, computer code segments, words, values, symbols, or any combination thereof. Determining whether an embodiment is implemented using hardware elements and/or software elements may vary in accordance with any number of factors, such as desired computational rate, power levels, heat tolerances, processing cycle budget, input data rates, output data rates, memory resources, data bus speeds and other design or performance constraints. 
     Some embodiments may be described using the expression “coupled” and “connected” along with their derivatives. These terms are not intended as synonyms for each other. For example, some embodiments may be described using the terms “connected” and/or “coupled” to indicate that two or more elements are in direct physical or electrical contact with each other. The term “coupled,” however, may also mean that two or more elements are not in direct contact with each other, but yet still co-operate or interact with each other. 
     Some embodiments may be implemented, for example, using a machine-readable medium or article which may store an instruction or a set of instructions that, if executed by a machine, may cause the machine to perform a method and/or operations in accordance with the embodiments. Such a machine may include, for example, any suitable processing platform, computing platform, computing device, processing device, computing system, processing system, computer, processor, or the like, and may be implemented using any suitable combination of hardware and/or software. The machine-readable medium or article may include, for example, any suitable type of memory unit, memory device, memory article, memory medium, storage device, storage article, storage medium and/or storage unit, for example, memory, removable or non-removable media, erasable or non-erasable media, writeable or rewriteable media, digital or analog media, hard disk, floppy disk, Compact Disk Read Only Memory (CD-ROM), Compact Disk Recordable (CD-R), Compact Disk Rewriteable (CD-RW), optical disk, magnetic media, magneto-optical media, removable memory cards or disks, various types of Digital Versatile Disk (DVD), a tape, a cassette, or the like. The instructions may include any suitable type of code, such as source code, compiled code, interpreted code, executable code, static code, dynamic code, encrypted code, and the like, implemented using any suitable high-level, low-level, object-oriented, visual, compiled and/or interpreted programming language. 
     Unless specifically stated otherwise, it may be appreciated that terms such as “processing,” “computing,” “calculating,” “determining,” or the like, refer to the action and/or processes of a computer or computing system, or similar electronic computing device, that manipulates and/or transforms data represented as physical quantities (e.g., electronic) within the computing system&#39;s registers and/or memories into other data similarly represented as physical quantities within the computing system&#39;s memories, registers or other such information storage, transmission or display devices. The embodiments are not limited in this context. 
     Numerous specific details have been set forth herein to provide a thorough understanding of the embodiments. It will be understood by those skilled in the art, however, that the embodiments may be practiced without these specific details. In other instances, well-known operations, components and circuits have not been described in detail so as not to obscure the embodiments. It can be appreciated that the specific structural and functional details disclosed herein may be representative and do not necessarily limit the scope of the embodiments. 
     Although the subject matter has been described in language specific to structural features and/or methodological acts, it is to be understood that the subject matter defined in the appended claims is not necessarily limited to the specific features or acts described above. Rather, the specific features and acts described above are disclosed as example forms of implementing the claims.