Patent ID: 7231519

Claim:
A method for establishing a secure transmission channel from a user process running on a first partition of a first node partitioned into a plurality of partitions including the first partition, each partition having a corresponding operating system instance such that each partition is a separate virtual computer running on the first node, to a user process running on a second partition of a second node partitioned into a plurality of partitions including the second partition, each partition having a corresponding operating system instance such that each partition is a separate virtual computer running on the second node, the method comprising: sending a key, identification of the first partition of the first node, and identification of the second partition of the second node from hardware of the first node to hardware of the second node, such that the key is inaccessible by all user processes running on the first node, in that none of the user processes are able to access the key, and unauthorized processes running on the first node are unable to send unauthorized messages through the hardware of the first node; receiving the key, identification of the first partition of the first node, and identification of the second partition of the second node by the hardware of the second node; verifying the identification of the first partition of the first node and the identification of the second partition of the second node by the hardware of the second node; and, storing the key at the hardware of the second node, such that the key is inaccessible by all user processes running on the second node, in that none of the user processes are able to access the key, wherein the hardware of the first hardware and the hardware of the second node establish a channel over which the user process running on the first partition of the first node and the user process running on the second partition of the second node are able to communicate, and wherein the first and the second nodes are the same node.