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Build a CSV confidential computing environment on g7h instances

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This topic describes how to build a confidential computing environment on ECS instances that use Hygon China Secure Virtualization (CSV) technology, called CSV instances. It also demonstrates how to run sample code to verify the CSV feature.

Background information

Hygon China Secure Virtualization (CSV) is an ECS protection technology based on Hygon CPU hardware. The runtime state of a CSV instance, such as memory data, is encrypted and protected by the CPU hardware. Neither cloud providers nor external attackers can monitor or tamper with the internal runtime state of a CSV instance, such as running processes and sensitive data. For more information about Hygon CSV technology, see Hygon Arch.

Hygon CSV provides default security protection for your instances and applications. You can migrate existing applications directly to CSV instances to benefit from CSV protection without redevelopment.

Create a CSV instance

Note

Currently, only the g7h instance family supports the CSV feature. For more information, see g7h general-purpose instance family.

Console

Creating a CSV instance on the console is similar to creating a regular one, but involves a few specific settings. For information about other general configurations, see Create an instance by using the wizard.

  1. Go to ECS console - Instances.

  2. In the upper-left corner of the page, select a region and resource group.

  3. Click Create Instance and configure the instance with the following settings.

    Parameter

    Description

    Instance type

    Only the following g7h instance types support the CSV feature.

    • ecs.g7h.2xlarge

    • Known issues with the Linux guest kernel SWIOTLB buffer:

      • Less memory is visible to the OS compared to a regular instance. A TDX instance reserves unencrypted memory (SWIOTLB) for peripheral communication. By default, this area is 6% of available memory, up to 1 GiB.

      • Attaching multiple elastic network interfaces (ENIs) to a large instance may cause a crash due to insufficient SWIOTLB memory in multi-queue network card scenarios. Stop the instance on the console and detach ENIs to recover.

      • High-I/O workloads may experience performance degradation from insufficient SWIOTLB. Check with:

        dmesg| grep 'swiotlb buffer is full'
        Important

        Incorrect SWIOTLB settings may cause boot failure. Create a snapshot before proceeding so you can roll back if errors occur.

        If this issue occurs, increase the SWIOTLB size:

        • Set the SWIOTLB size to 1 GiB.

          grubby --update-kernel=ALL --args=swiotlb=524288

        • For kernel versions later than 5.10.134-18.al8.x86_64, add the any parameter to support larger SWIOTLB sizes:

          grubby --update-kernel=ALL --args=swiotlb=2097152,any   # Sets SWIOTLB to 4 GiB.
          Note

          Calculate the SWIOTLB parameter value: Target size (in MiB) × 512. See The kernel's command-line parameters.

    • ecs.g7h.4xlarge

    • ecs.g7h.8xlarge

    • ecs.g7h.16xlarge

    Image

    Select the Confidential VM checkbox, and then select the Alibaba Cloud Linux 3.2104 LTS 64-bit image.

  4. Follow the on-screen instructions to finish creating the instance.

API

You can call the RunInstances operation to create an instance. The following table describes the key parameters.

Parameter

Description

Example

InstanceType

Select an instance type that supports the CSV feature. The currently supported instance types are:

  • ecs.g7h.2xlarge

  • ecs.g7h.4xlarge

  • ecs.g7h.8xlarge

ecs.g7h.2xlarge

ImageId

Specify the ID of an image that is supported by CSV instances. Currently, only the following image is supported:

Alibaba Cloud Linux 3.2104 LTS 64-bit UEFI edition.

aliyun_3_x64_20G_alibase_20241218.vhd

SecurityOptions.ConfidentialComputingMode

Set the confidential computing mode.

CSV

Verify CSV status

Before you use the CSV confidential computing environment, we recommend that you verify that CSV is enabled.

  1. Check if the CSV feature is enabled.

    Using MSR

    You can check whether the CSV feature is enabled by accessing the CSV_STATUS model-specific register (MSR) at 0xC0010131. This MSR is read-only, and the hypervisor cannot intercept access to it. Run the following commands to perform the check:

    sudo yum install msr-tools
sudo rdmsr 0xC0010131 --bitfield 1:0

    The following output indicates that the CSV feature is enabled.

    [test@iZbp1asmdfbcxxx  ~]$ sudo rdmsr 0xC0010131 --bitfield 1:0
1

    Using the kernel log

    For an instance with the CSV feature enabled, the kernel prints a corresponding log entry after the check is complete. You can run the following command to check the log:

    dmesg | grep SEV

    The following output indicates that the CSV feature is enabled.

    [test@iZbp1asmdfc3k4          ~]$ dmesg | grep SEV
[    0.931869] Memory Encryption Features active:AMD   SEV

  2. Check if the CSV-related drivers are installed.

    sudo modprobe csv-guest
ls -l /dev/csv-guest

    The following output indicates that the CSV-related drivers are installed.

    [test@iZbp1asmdfbc    ~]$ sudo modprobe csv-guest
[test@iZbp1asmdfbc    ~]$ ls -l /dev/csv-guest
crwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10, 125 Jul 31 15:09 /dev/csv-guest

Build and verify the CSV environment

Note

Typically, applications that run in non-CSV environments can be migrated directly to a CSV instance without redevelopment. To fully benefit from the enhanced security of CSV, Alibaba Cloud recommends using the confidential virtual machine features described below.

A CSV attestation report is a data structure that represents the identity of a CSV instance and is generated directly by the Hygon Platform Security Processor (PSP). It contains key information, such as the instance's policy (POLICY), user-defined data (UserData), and virtual machine digest (DIGEST). Its integrity is protected by cryptographic mechanisms. Alibaba Cloud provides a sample tool for you to quickly generate and verify a CSV attestation report.

  1. Download the remote attestation sample tool provided by Alibaba Cloud.

    wget https://enclave-cn-hangzhou.oss-cn-hangzhou.aliyuncs.com/csv/requirements.txt
wget https://enclave-cn-hangzhou.oss-cn-hangzhou.aliyuncs.com/csv/csv-attestation.py
sudo pip3 install -r requirements.txt
chmod +x ./csv-attestation.py

    The following output indicates that the remote attestation sample tool is installed.

    [test@iZbp1asmdfbc3k      ~]$ sudo pip3 install -r requirements.txt
WARNING: Running pip install with root privileges is generally not a good idea. Try `pip3 install --user` instead.
Requirement already satisfied: requests==2.20.0 in /usr/lib/python3.6/site-packages (from -r requirements.txt (line 1))
Collecting snowland_smx==0.3.1 (from -r requirements.txt (line 2))
  Downloading http://mirrors.cloud.aliyuncs.com/pypi/packages/2c/61/f59f0d18b2f305473d6f62550bf668610936f34dc908daf25b1a9237846/snowland_smx-0.3.1-py3-none-any.whl
Requirement already satisfied: chardet<3.1.0,>=3.0.2 in /usr/lib/python3.6/site-packages (from requests==2.20.0->-r requirements.txt (line 1))
Requirement already satisfied: idna<2.8,>=2.5 in /usr/lib/python3.6/site-packages (from requests==2.20.0->-r requirements.txt (line 1))
Requirement already satisfied: urllib3<1.25,>=1.21.1 in /usr/lib/python3.6/site-packages (from requests==2.20.0->-r requirements.txt (line 1))
Installing collected packages: snowland-smx
Successfully installed snowland-smx-0.3.1

  2. Generate an attestation report for the local instance.

    sudo ./csv-attestation.py generate -r ./

    The following output indicates that the attestation report is successfully saved to the report file in the current directory.

    [test@iZbp1asmdfbc3k     ~]$ sudo ./csv-attestation.py generate -r ./
Attestation report is written to ./report successfully!

  3. Verify the attestation report.

    sudo ./csv-attestation.py verify -r ./report

    The following output is an example. In the POLICY field, NODEBUG indicates that the CSV instance is not in debugging mode, and NOKS indicates that the VM's encryption key is exclusive to this instance, indicating a secure, protected mode.

    [test@iZbp1asmdfbc xxx    ~]$ sudo ./csv-attestation.py verify -r ./report
****Verified Attestation Report****
{
    "PUBKEY_DIGEST": "000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000",
    "ID": "0000000000000000000000000000",
    "Version": "00000000000000000000000000000000",
    "Userdata": "944565eb3160b54d01a346a4d69270393fff543cf903d5ff59b89c8b9027b1410715f322ae2de32799ffa3c52fed4eee272028d1696dbc8f5e",
    "MNONCE": "666264ff98529ce36e89e2dcxxx",
    "DIGEST_HEX": "ef0cf845ba33e913b9bf6ce0dbda6750b1f134c8e9966d725eaa8xxx",
    "CHIP_ID": "THSU67001xxx",
    "POLICY": "NODEBUG || NOKS || HSK_VERSION-0x0 || CEK_VERSION-0x0 || API_MAJOR-0x0 || API_MINOR-0x0 || API_MINOR-0x0"
}

  4. Generate an attestation report with specific UserData.

    When you generate an attestation report, you can specify the UserData to include custom data in the report.

    sudo ./csv-attestation.py generate -r ./ -u your-data-like-pubkey-digest
    [test@iZbp1asmdfbc3k       ~ ~]$ sudo ./csv-attestation.py generate -r ./ -u your-data-like-pubkey-digest
Attestation report is written to ./report successfully!
[test@iZbp1asmdfbc3k       ~ ~]$ sudo ./csv-attestation.py verify -r ./report
****Verified Attestation Report****
{
    "PUBKEY_DIGEST": "000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000",
    "ID": "00000000000000000000000000",
    "Version": "00000000000000000000000000000000",
    "Userdata": "xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx796f75722d646174612d6c696b652d7075622b6b65792d646966696",
    "MNONCE": "3e1084e25ef82dc34ff34fe0xxx",
    "DIGEST_HEX": "ef0cf845ba33e913b9bf6ce0dbda6750b1f134c8e99066d725eaa8d561xxx",
    "CHIP_ID": "THSU670012xxx",
    "POLICY": "NODEBUG || NOKS || HSK_VERSION-0x0 || CEK_VERSION-0x0 || API_MAJOR-0x0 || API_MINOR-0x0 || API_MINOR-0x0"
}

Known limitations

  • When the CSV feature is enabled, the CPU hardware encrypts memory data. This may cause performance degradation compared to regular ECS instances.

  • Image limitations:

    • Only the Alibaba Cloud Linux 3.2104 LTS 64-bit UEFI edition image is supported, and the kernel version must be 5.10.134-16.al8.x86_64 or later.

    • Windows is not currently supported.

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