Linux Security Summit North America 2018

The KVM and PowerVM guest environments are significantly different from the OpenPOWER host environment: the boot sequence is shorter, the firmware components are simpler, and the bootloader is entirely replaced. A secure boot design must accommodate the dissimilarities and, consequently, the solution for the OpenPOWER host is not directly applicable to guests. Yet, much as for the host case, existing open source elements can help solve the problem of booting guest OSs securely. This talk follows last year's OpenPOWER host secure boot talk and discusses possible design alternatives that reuse open source code to bring OS boot security improvements to KVM on OpenPOWER and PowerVM guests.