Towards Management of Chains of Trust for Multi-Clouds with Intel SGX

In multi-cloud infrastructures, despite the great diversity of current isolation technologies, a federating model to manage trust across layers or domains is still missing. Attempts to formalize trust establishment through horizontal and vertical  Chains of Trust (CoTs) still lack a precise supporting technology. This paper is a  first step towards reconciling the two standpoints towards a broader trust  management framework. We consider the horizontal, single-layer case, focusing  on Intel SGX as promising isolation technology. We propose a protocol for  establishing trust between a chain of Intel SGX enclaves, both when they are  located on the same and on remote platforms. Preliminary evaluation of an OpenSGX implementation shows our protocols present encouraging scalability  results.