Framework Implementation Based On Grid of Smartcards To Authenticate Users and Virtual Machines
Abstract
The Security for the Future Networks (SecFuNet) project proposes to integrate the secure microcontrollers in order to introduce, among its many services, authentication and authorization functions for Cloud and virtual environments. One of the main goals of SecFuNet is to develop a secure infrastructure for virtualized environments and Clouds in order to provide strong isolation among virtual infrastructures, and guarantee that one virtual machine (VM) should not interfere with others. The goal of this paper is to describe the implementation and the experimentation of the solution for identifying users and nodes in the SecFuNet architecture. In this implementation, we also employ low-cost smartcards. Only authorized users are allowed to create or instantiate virtual environments. Thus, users and hypervisors are equipped with secure elements, used to open TLS secure channels with strong mutual authentication.