Patent ID: 8856544

Claim:
A method for hosting a secure virtual machine, instantiated by a user, on a computer processor provided by an owner, comprising the steps of: booting said computer processor with a zone manager image to start a zone manager session in accordance with a computer processor private key; procuring at said computer processor a first public/private key pair (K ZM , K ZM −1 ) associated with the zone manager session; generating a certificate (C(ZM)) for the public key (K ZM ) of said first public/private key pair using said private key associated with said computer processor; receiving, at said computer processor running the zone manager, a secure virtual machine instantiation command from said owner as requested by said user, said secure virtual machine instantiation command including a certificate of said user (C(user)); creating between said zone manager and said user a secure communication channel; creating, at said computer processor running the zone manager, a second public/private key pair (K SVM , K SVM −1 ) associated with the secure virtual machine; generating a certificate (C(SVM)) for the public key of said second public/private key pair with the private key of said first public/private key pair; and creating, between said secure virtual machine and said user a second secure communication channel certified by C(user) and C(SVM).