Date: Fri, 19 Jun 2009 11:34:14 -0700
From: Chris Wright <chrisw@sous-sol.org>
To: Pavel Machek <pavel@ucw.cz>
Cc: James Morris <jmorris@namei.org>, Joseph Cihula <joseph.cihula@intel.com>,
       Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
       arjan@linux.intel.com, hpa@zytor.com, andi@firstfloor.org,
       Chris Wright <chrisw@sous-sol.org>, jbeulich@novell.com,
       peterm@redhat.com, gang.wei@intel.com, shane.wang@intel.com
Subject: Re: [RFC v4][PATCH 2/2] intel_txt: Intel(R) TXT and tboot kernel
	support
Message-ID: <20090619183414.GG19771@sequoia.sous-sol.org>
References: <4A299051.40405@intel.com> <alpine.LRH.2.00.0906121509001.14633@tundra.namei.org> <20090619150514.GE1389@ucw.cz>
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* Pavel Machek (pavel@ucw.cz) wrote:
> What are non-evil uses of this code?

The most common use case I've heard requested from real live
customers[1] is...you guessed it...trusted boot.

This is typically in the context of virtualization and data centers or
clouds.  The concerns being addressed are:

* confidence that the hardware is running the VMM that the hardware
  owner configured it w/, since they are on the hook for providing a
  safe service for each VM running on that hardware

* flip side of that is an additional layer protecting against malicious
  VM that is using some VMM hole to try and subvert the host w/ a VMM
  of their own

thanks,
-chris
--

[1] as opposed to hardware vendors pushing a feature
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