Hash tree based trustworthiness verification mechanism in virtual environment

The trustworthiness of virtual machines is a big security issue in cloud computing. In this paper, we aimed at designing a practical trustworthiness mechanism in virtual environment. With the assist of a third certificate agent, the cloud user generates a trust base and extends it to its VMs. For each service running on the VM, a hash value is generated from all the necessary modules, and these hash values are organized and maintained with a specially designed hash tree whose root is extended from the user's trust base. Before the VM loads a service, the hash tree is verified from the coordinated hash value to check the trustworthiness of the service.