Patent ID: 8220029

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for extending security enforcement by a hypervisor to include enforcing trusted computing (TC) policies, comprising the steps of: receiving a request from a subject for access to an object; obtaining TC-related attribute values for the subject and the object based on a virtualized trusted platform module (vTPM) with the vTMP virtualizing TC functions of a trusted platform module (TMP) including TPM hardware such that, each virtual machine has an instance of a vTPM as its root of trust wherein obtaining TC-related attribute values includes obtaining integrity values for the TC-related attributes of the subject and the object; and making access control decisions based at least on the integrity values and TC-related policies using XSM hook functions wherein the hypervisor is a Xen hypervisor and a Xen Security Module (XSM) integrated with the vTPM is used to provide secure virtual machine inter-communication permitting access when a TC policy condition is satisfied for at least one of the obtained integrity values.