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Version: 2.16

Attestation

This page explains Constellation's attestation process and highlights the cornerstones of its trust model.

Terms​

The following lists terms and concepts that help to understand the attestation concept of Constellation.

Trusted Platform Module (TPM)​

A TPM chip is a dedicated tamper-resistant crypto-processor. It can securely store artifacts such as passwords, certificates, encryption keys, or runtime measurements (more on this below). When a TPM is implemented in software, it's typically called a virtual TPM (vTPM).

Runtime measurement​

A runtime measurement is a cryptographic hash of the memory pages of a so called runtime component. Runtime components of interest typically include a system's bootloader or OS kernel.

Platform Configuration Register (PCR)​

A Platform Configuration Register (PCR) is a memory location in the TPM that has some unique properties. To store a new value in a PCR, the existing value is extended with a new value as follows:

PCR[N] = HASHalg( PCR[N] || ArgumentOfExtend )

The PCRs are typically used to store runtime measurements. The new value of a PCR is always an extension of the existing value. Thus, storing the measurements of multiple components into the same PCR irreversibly links them together.

Measured boot​

Measured boot builds on the concept of chained runtime measurements. Each component in the boot chain loads and measures the next component into the PCR before executing it. By comparing the resulting PCR values against trusted reference values, the integrity of the entire boot chain and thereby the running system can be ensured.

Remote attestation (RA)​

Remote attestation is the process of verifying certain properties of an application or platform, such as integrity and confidentiality, from a remote location. In the case of a measured boot, the goal is to obtain a signed attestation statement on the PCR values of the boot measurements. The statement can then be verified and compared to a set of trusted reference values. This way, the integrity of the platform can be ensured before sharing secrets with it.

Confidential virtual machine (CVM)​

Confidential computing (CC) is the protection of data in-use with hardware-based trusted execution environments (TEEs). With CVMs, TEEs encapsulate entire virtual machines and isolate them against the hypervisor, other VMs, and direct memory access. After loading the initial VM image into encrypted memory, the hypervisor calls for a secure processor to measure these initial memory pages. The secure processor locks these pages and generates an attestation report on the initial page measurements. CVM memory pages are encrypted with a key that resides inside the secure processor, which makes sure only the guest VM can access them. The attestation report is signed by the secure processor and can be verified using remote attestation via the certificate authority of the hardware vendor. Such an attestation statement guarantees the confidentiality and integrity of a CVM.

Attested TLS (aTLS)​

In a CC environment, attested TLS (aTLS) can be used to establish secure connections between two parties using the remote attestation features of the CC components.

aTLS modifies the TLS handshake by embedding an attestation statement into the TLS certificate. Instead of relying on a certificate authority, aTLS uses this attestation statement to establish trust in the certificate.

The protocol can be used by clients to verify a server certificate, by a server to verify a client certificate, or for mutual verification (mutual aTLS).

Overview​

The challenge for Constellation is to lift a CVM's attestation statement to the Kubernetes software layer and make it end-to-end verifiable. From there, Constellation needs to expand the attestation from a single CVM to the entire cluster.

The JoinService and VerificationService are where all runs together. Internally, the JoinService uses remote attestation to securely join CVM nodes to the cluster. Externally, the VerificationService provides an attestation statement for the cluster's CVMs and configuration.

The following explains the details of both steps.

Node attestation​

The idea is that Constellation nodes should have verifiable integrity from the CVM hardware measurement up to the Kubernetes software layer. The solution is a verifiable boot chain and an integrity-protected runtime environment.

Constellation uses measured boot within CVMs, measuring each component in the boot process before executing it. Outside of CC, this is usually implemented via TPMs. CVM technologies differ in how they implement runtime measurements, but the general concepts are similar to those of a TPM. For simplicity, TPM terminology like PCR is used in the following.

When a Constellation node image boots inside a CVM, measured boot is used for all stages and components of the boot chain. This process goes up to the root filesystem. The root filesystem is mounted read-only with integrity protection. For the details on the image and boot stages see the image architecture documentation. Any changes to the image will inevitably also change the corresponding PCR values. To create a node attestation statement, the Constellation image obtains a CVM attestation statement from the hardware. This includes the runtime measurements and thereby binds the measured boot results to the CVM hardware measurement.

In addition to the image measurements, Constellation extends a PCR during the initialization phase that irrevocably marks the node as initialized. The measurement is created using the clusterID, tying all future attestation statements to this ID. Thereby, an attestation statement is unique for every cluster and a node can be identified unambiguously as being initialized.

To verify an attestation, the hardware's signature and a statement are verified first to establish trust in the contained runtime measurements. If successful, the measurements are verified against the trusted values of the particular Constellation release version. Finally, the measurement of the clusterID can be compared by calculating it with the master secret.

Runtime measurements​

Constellation uses runtime measurements to implement the measured boot approach. As stated above, the underlying hardware technology and guest firmware differ in their implementations of runtime measurements. The following gives a detailed description of the available measurements in the different cloud environments.

The runtime measurements consist of two types of values:

  • Measurements produced by the cloud infrastructure and firmware of the CVM: These are measurements of closed-source firmware and other values controlled by the cloud provider. While not being reproducible for the user, some of them can be compared against previously observed values. Others may change frequently and aren't suitable for verification. The signed image measurements include measurements that are known, previously observed values.

  • Measurements produced by the Constellation bootloader and boot chain: The Constellation Bootloader takes over from the CVM firmware and measures the rest of the boot chain. The Constellation Bootstrapper is the first user mode component that runs in a Constellation image. It extends PCR registers with the IDs of the cluster marking a node as initialized.

Constellation allows to specify in the config which measurements should be enforced during the attestation process. Enforcing non-reproducible measurements controlled by the cloud provider means that changes in these values require manual updates to the cluster's config. By default, Constellation only enforces measurements that are stable values produced by the infrastructure or by Constellation directly.

Constellation uses the vTPM (NitroTPM) feature of the AWS Nitro System on AWS for runtime measurements.

The vTPM adheres to the TPM 2.0 specification. The VMs are attested by obtaining signed PCR values over the VM's boot configuration from the TPM and comparing them to a known, good state (measured boot).

The following table lists all PCR values of the vTPM and the measured components. It also lists what components of the boot chain did the measurements and if the value is reproducible and verifiable. The latter means that the value can be generated offline and compared to the one in the vTPM.

PCRComponentsMeasured byReproducible and verifiable
0FirmwareAWSNo
1FirmwareAWSNo
2FirmwareAWSNo
3FirmwareAWSNo
4Constellation Bootloader, Kernel, initramfs, Kernel command lineAWS, Constellation BootloaderYes
5FirmwareAWSNo
6FirmwareAWSNo
7Secure Boot PolicyAWS, Constellation BootloaderNo
8---
9initramfs, Kernel command lineLinux KernelYes
10User spaceLinux IMANo1
11Unified Kernel Image componentsConstellation BootloaderYes
12Reserved(User space, Constellation Bootloader)Yes
13Reserved(Constellation Bootloader)Yes
14Secure Boot StateConstellation BootloaderNo
15ClusterIDConstellation BootstrapperYes
16–23Unused--

CVM verification​

To verify the integrity of the received attestation statement, a chain of trust from the CVM technology to the interface providing the statement has to be established. For verification of the CVM technology, Constellation may expose additional options in its config file.

On AWS, AMD SEV-SNP is used to provide runtime encryption to the VMs. An SEV-SNP attestation report is used to establish trust in the VM. You may customize certain parameters for verification of the attestation statement using the Constellation config file.

  • TCB versions

    You can set the minimum version numbers of components in the SEV-SNP TCB. Use the latest versions to enforce that only machines with the most recent firmware updates are allowed to join the cluster. Alternatively, you can set a lower minimum version to allow slightly out-of-date machines to still be able to join the cluster.

  • AMD Root Key Certificate

    This certificate is the root of trust for verifying the SEV-SNP certificate chain.

  • AMD Signing Key Certificate

    This is the intermediate certificate for verifying the SEV-SNP report's signature. If it's not specified, the CLI fetches it from the AMD key distribution server.

Cluster attestation​

Cluster-facing, Constellation's JoinService verifies each node joining the cluster given the configured ground truth runtime measurements. User-facing, the VerificationService provides an interface to verify a node using remote attestation. By verifying the first node during the initialization and configuring the ground truth measurements that are subsequently enforced by the JoinService, the whole cluster is verified in a transitive way.

Cluster-facing attestation​

The JoinService is provided with the runtime measurements of the whitelisted Constellation image version as the ground truth. During the initialization and the cluster bootstrapping, each node connects to the JoinService using aTLS. During the handshake, the node transmits an attestation statement including its runtime measurements. The JoinService verifies that statement and compares the measurements against the ground truth. For details of the initialization process check the microservice descriptions.

After the initialization, every node updates its runtime measurements with the clusterID value, marking it irreversibly as initialized. When an initialized node tries to join another cluster, its measurements inevitably mismatch the measurements of an uninitialized node and it will be declined.

User-facing attestation​

The VerificationService provides an endpoint for obtaining its hardware-based remote attestation statement, which includes the runtime measurements. A user can verify this statement and compare the measurements against the configured ground truth and, thus, verify the identity and integrity of all Constellation components and the cluster configuration. Subsequently, the user knows that the entire cluster is in the expected state and is trustworthy.

Putting it all together​

This section puts the aforementioned concepts together and illustrate how trust into a Constellation cluster is established and maintained.

CLI and node images​

It all starts with the CLI executable. The CLI is signed by Edgeless Systems. To ensure non-repudiability for CLI releases, Edgeless Systems publishes corresponding signatures to the public ledger of the sigstore project. There's a step-by-step guide on how to verify CLI signatures based on sigstore.

The CLI contains the latest runtime measurements of the Constellation node image for all supported cloud platforms. In case a different version of the node image is to be used, the corresponding runtime measurements can be fetched using the CLI's fetch-measurements command. This command downloads the runtime measurements and the corresponding signature from cdn.confidential.cloud. See for example the following files corresponding to node image v2.16.3:

The CLI contains the long-term public key of Edgeless Systems to verify the signature of downloaded runtime measurements.

Cluster creation​

When a cluster is created, the CLI automatically verifies the runtime measurements of the first node using remote attestation. Based on this, the CLI and the first node set up a temporary TLS connection. This aTLS connection is used for two things:

  1. The CLI sends the master secret of the to-be-created cluster to the CLI. The master secret is generated by the first node.
  2. The first node sends a kubeconfig file with Kubernetes credentials to the CLI.

After this, the aTLS connection is closed and the first node bootstraps the Kubernetes cluster. All subsequent interactions between the CLI and the cluster go via the Kubernetes API server running inside the cluster. The CLI (and other tools like kubectl) use the credentials referenced by the kubeconfig file to authenticate themselves towards the Kubernetes API server and to establish a mTLS connection.

The CLI connects to the Kubernetes API to write the runtime measurements for the applicable node image to etcd. The JoinService uses these runtime measurements to verify all nodes that join the cluster subsequently.

Chain of trust​

In summary, there's a chain of trust based on cryptographic signatures that goes from the user to the cluster via the CLI. This is illustrated in the following diagram.

Upgrades​

Whenever a cluster is upgraded to a new version of the node image, the CLI sends the corresponding runtime measurements via the Kubernetes API server. The new runtime measurements are stored in etcd within the cluster and replace any previous runtime measurements. The new runtime measurements are then used automatically by the JoinService for the verification of new nodes.

References​

  1. Linux IMA produces runtime measurements of user-space binaries. However, these measurements aren't deterministic and thus, PCR[10] can't be compared to a constant value. Instead, a policy engine must be used to verify the TPM event log against a policy.↩