TECHNOLOGY GUIDE

Intel Corporation

Intel® Software Guard Extensions (Intel® SGX) – Key

Management Reference Application (KMRA) on the 3rd and
4th Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable Processors

Authors 1 Introduction
Kapil Sood Intel® Software Guard Extensions (Intel® SGX) is a set of instructions that helps increase the
Veronika Karpenko security of application code and data. Developers can partition security sensitive code and data
into an “SGX Enclave”, which is executed in a CPU protected region.
Jon Strang
NGINX is a prevalent open-source transport layer security (TLS) web service that is widely
David Lu
deployed in multiple applications. NGINX relies on the private key to perform authentication and
Seosamh O'Riordain
key agreement operations for TLS handshake. As such, the security of these private keys is of
Darragh Coen utmost importance for customers.
Kamil Lorek Key Management Reference Application (KMRA) is proof-of-concept software created to
demonstrate the integration of Intel® Software Guard Extensions (Intel® SGX) asymmetric key
capability with a hardware security model (HSM) on a centralized key server. The goal of this
document is to outline the steps to set up an NGINX workload to access the private key in an
Intel® SGX enclave on the 3rd and 4th Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable processor by using the Public-
Key Cryptography Standard (PKCS) #11 interface and OpenSSL. This paper describes the use of
Intel SGX to help secure the NGINX private key on a general-purpose Intel® Xeon® platform. The
unique security properties of Intel SGX, combined with the broad use of NGINX in web and
cloud services, show an example of how Intel SGX can be used to more securely provision
private keys into the enclave on a cloud platform, and then use those keys while they are
protected inside the enclave.
KMRA can be deployed using Ansible automation scripts and Docker containers. It is also
integrated into BMRA (Bare Metal Reference Architecture), Service Mesh, and Intel® Smart Edge
Open.
Another significant contribution of this white paper is to illustrate the ease-of-use and ease-of-
deployment for a complete end-to-end Intel SGX system. Customers can use this white paper
and associated collateral as a reference to replicate Intel SGX deployments and customizations
within their unique environments.
Intel SGX enclaves can be used for applications ranging from private key protection, security
credentials management, and providing security services. In addition, industry security
standards like ETSI NFV SEC have defined and published security requirements for hardware-
mediated execution enclaves like Intel SGX for purposes of network functions virtualization
(NFV), 5G, and edge security. Intel SGX addresses multi-administration security requirements for
these emerging cloud networking systems, which are increasingly software-defined and highly
distributed. The intended audience for this document is Technical Architects, Solution
Architects, Product Managers, Software Engineers, Engineering Managers, System and Security
Architects, and Application Engineers.
This document can act as a reference to implement Intel SGX for Intel platforms to help secure
workload keys, credential management, and Intel SGX deployment in a data center. It is highly
recommended that readers refer to widely available documents for Intel SGX design and
enabling.
This document is part of the Network Transformation Experience Kit, which is available at
https://networkbuilders.intel.com/network-technologies/network-transformation-exp-kits.

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Table of Contents
1 Introduction........................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 1
1.1 Terminology .......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................3
1.2 Reference Documentation ...........................................................................................................................................................................................................................3

2 Overview ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 4

3 Intel® Software Guard Extensions (Intel® SGX) and KMRA ..................................................................................................................................... 4

3.1 Intel® SGX Deployment .................................................................................................................................................................................................................................4
3.1.1 Intel® SGX-Trusted Environment Mode (TEM) Security Model and Usages .......................................................................................................................... 4
3.1.2 Flexible Launch Control (FLC) ................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 5
3.1.3 Data Center Attestation Primitives (DCAP) .......................................................................................................................................................................................... 5
3.1.4 Enclave Remote Attestation ....................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 6
3.2 Customer Private Key Security - Use Case............................................................................................................................................................................................7
3.2.1 NGINX KMRA Flow with Intel® SGX ......................................................................................................................................................................................................... 8
3.2.2 KMRA Software Design and Architecture ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 8
3.2.3 Intel® SGX PKCS#11 Provider Crypto - Toolkit .................................................................................................................................................................................. 9
3.2.4 Enclave Attestation Using KMRA Key Server ................................................................................................................................................................................... 10

4 Deployment ...................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 10
4.1 Automated Intel® SGX Deployment with Ansible ........................................................................................................................................................................... 10
4.2 Containerized KMRA.................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 10

5 Bare Metal Reference Architecture (BMRA) Integration ........................................................................................................................................ 11

5.1 Service Mesh support ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 11
5.2 Secure Key Management with Intel® Smart Edge Open ............................................................................................................................................................... 12

6 Summary ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 12

Figures
Figure 1: Intel® SGX Security Model ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 4
Figure 2: Application Refactoring for an Enclave ................................................................................................................................................................................................. 5
Figure 3: Intel® SGX Data Center Attestation Deployment Architecture .................................................................................................................................................... 6
Figure 4: Intel® SGX Remote Attestation .................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 7
Figure 5. NGINX KMRA Flow with Intel SGX ........................................................................................................................................................................................................... 8
Figure 6: KMRA NGINX/Intel® SGX Key Management Software Design ...................................................................................................................................................... 9
Figure 7: Crypto API Toolkit for Intel® SGX Software Architecture............................................................................................................................................................... 9
Figure 8: KMRA SW Design and Deployment Using Docker Images ......................................................................................................................................................... 10
Figure 9. km-wrap and km-attest Sample App SW Design in KMRA ........................................................................................................................................................ 11

Tables
Table 1. Terminology ...................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 3
Table 2. Reference Documents .................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 3

Document Revision History

REVISION DATE DESCRIPTION
001 February 2021 Initial release.
002 April 2021 Revised the document for public release to Intel® Network Builders.
003 August 2021 Added support for Docker containers.
004 March 2022 Updated KMRA REST API endpoints and cloud native support section.
005 June 2022 Added NGINX KMRA flow with Intel® SGX diagram, removed KMRA REST API and moved it to KMRA User
Guide, added deployment and integration sections.
006 July 2022 Included information regarding BMRA integration.

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1.1 Terminology
Table 1. Terminology

ABBREVIATION DESCRIPTION
Ansible Ansible is a radically simple IT automation engine that automates cloud provisioning, configuration management,
application deployment, and intra-service orchestration.
Ansible-playbook Playbooks are the files where Ansible code is written.
BIOS Basic Input/Output System is a set of computer instructions in firmware that controls input and output operations.
CA Certificate authority
CDN Content Delivery Network is a system of distributed servers (network). It delivers pages and other web content to a
user, based on the geographic locations of the user, the origin of the webpage, and the content delivery server.
DCAP Data Center Attestation Primitives. Intel® Software Guard Extensions Data Center Attestation Primitives (Intel® SGX
DCAP) provides SGX attestation support targeted for data centers, cloud services providers, and enterprises.
ECDSA Elliptic curve digital signature algorithm
Enclave Ring 3 application software running inside the Intel® SGX protections
FLC Flexible launch control
FW, UEFI FW Firmware, Unified Extensible Firmware Interface FW
HSM Hardware security module
Intel® SGX-TEM Intel® Software Guard Extensions – Trusted Environment Mode
KMRA Key Management Reference Application
mTLS Mutual transport layer security
OS Operating system
PCCS Provisioning Certificate Caching Service
PKCS Public-Key Cryptography Standard
PKCS#11 Public-Key Cryptography Standard. The PKCS#11 standard defines a platform-independent API to cryptographic
tokens, such as hardware security modules (HSM) and smart cards.
PSW Platform software
SGX Intel® Software Guard Extensions (Intel® SGX) is a set of instructions that increase the security of application code and
data, giving them more protection from disclosure or modification.
SSL Secure Sockets Layer is a networking protocol designed for securing connections between web clients and web
servers over an insecure network, such as the internet.
TLS Transport Layer Security

1.2 Reference Documentation

Table 2. Reference Documents

REFERENCE SOURCE
Intel® SGX Programming Reference and SDK for Linux https://software.intel.com/content/www/us/en/develop/articles/intel-
sdm.html#combined

https://download.01.org/intel-sgx/latest/linux-latest/docs/

https://github.com/intel/linux-sgx
PKCS#11 Specification http://docs.oasis-open.org/pkcs11/pkcs11-base/v2.40/pkcs11-base-
v2.40.html
ETSI NFV Security Standards (SEC001, SEC012, SEC013, others) http://www.etsi.org/technologies-clusters/technologies/nfv

Intel® SGX Resources https://software.intel.com/content/www/us/en/develop/topics/software-

guard-extensions.html

https://software.intel.com/content/www/us/en/develop/download/intel-
software-guard-extensions-intel-sgx-developer-guide.html

https://software.intel.com/content/www/us/en/develop/articles/intel-
sdm.html

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REFERENCE SOURCE
Intel® SGX Crypto-Toolkit Open Source https://github.com/intel/crypto-api-toolkit
Intel® SGX ECDSA Attestation DCAP and APIs https://download.01.org/intel-sgx/latest/dcap-latest/linux/docs/

https://github.com/cloud-security-research/sgx-ra-tls

https://github.com/intel/SGXDataCenterAttestationPrimitives
Intel® SGX Flexible Launch Control (FLC) https://github.com/intel/linux-sgx/blob/master/psw/ae/ref_le/ref_le.md

https://software.intel.com/content/www/us/en/develop/blogs/an-update-
on-3rd-party-attestation.html
Intel® SGX Open Source Projects https://github.com/intel/intel-sgx-ssl

https://github.com/intel/sgx-ra-sample
Intel® SGX Security Analysis https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/security-center/default.html

https://software.intel.com/security-software-guidance/
Intel® Software Guard Extensions (Intel® SGX) - Key Management https://networkbuilders.intel.com/solutionslibrary/intel-sgx-kmra-on-intel-
Reference Application (KMRA) on Intel® Xeon® Processors User xeon-processors-user-guide
Guide

2 Overview
Intel® SGX is a set of instructions on Intel CPUs that helps increase the security of application code and data. Developers can
partition security sensitive code and data into an Intel SGX enclave, which is executed in a CPU protected region. The developer
creates these enclaves on untrusted platforms and uses Intel CPU-based attestation to ensure the integrity of their Intel SGX
enclave setup. After the enclave is verified, the remote attester can provision secrets securely into the enclave. In KMRA, we
provision the NGINX private key. The use of Intel SGX enclave is reserved for applications and cannot be used by an OS or BIOS
driver/module.

3 Intel® Software Guard Extensions (Intel® SGX) and KMRA

3.1 Intel® SGX Deployment
3.1.1 Intel® SGX-Trusted Environment Mode (TEM) Security Model and Usages
Intel SGX removes the privileged software (OS, VMM, SMM, devices) and unprivileged software (Ring 3 applications, VMs,
containers) from the trust boundary of the code running inside the enclave and enhances the security of sensitive application code
and data. Intel SGX enclave trusts the Intel CPU for execution and memory protections. Intel SGX encrypts memory to help protect
against memory bus snooping and cold boot attacks for enclave code and data in host DRAM.

Figure 1: Intel® SGX Security Model

Intel SGX relies on the system Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) BIOS and OS for initial provisioning, resource allocation,
and management. However, after an Intel SGX enclave starts execution, it runs on a cryptographically isolated environment separate
from the OS and UEFI BIOS, which can thereafter only launch a DoS attack on the Intel SGX enclave. Readers are highly encouraged

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to refer to Intel SGX collateral, including specifications, security analysis, SDK, drivers, and open source applications, from Intel,
academia, and customers.
Intel SGX allows confidential computing services to be delivered on Intel servers. Confidential computing is an emerging industry
paradigm where applications can be run in a cryptographically protected environment. It can allow any application (whole or partial)
to run inside an enclave, and by limiting the trusted compute base, Intel SGX puts application developers in control of their own
application security. However, it is recommended that developers keep the Intel SGX code base small, test for software side channel
resistance, and follow other secure software development guidelines included in the Intel® SGX Developer Guide.
Intel SGX enclaves can be used for applications ranging from private key protection, security credentials management, and security
service provider. The KMRA described in this specification focuses on customer private key protection. However, it is expected that
the broader Intel SGX enabling, provisioning, attestation, and application service delivery components of this KMRA system are
applicable to multiple customer use cases.
Intel SGX includes Intel architecture instruction set extension, which can be used by supervisor mode (like operating system
software) for enclave page cache (EPC) page management, and to create, initialize, and manage enclaves. The user mode
instructions allow an application to enter/exit an enclave, for attestation and key management. A detailed and updated set of Intel®
SGX ISA can be found in the Intel SGX Programing Reference document.

Figure 2: Application Refactoring for an Enclave

Intel® SGX TEM implementation on 3rd and 4th Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable processor provides memory confidentiality.

3.1.2 Flexible Launch Control (FLC)

Flexible launch control (FLC) allows the platform owner (not Intel) to control which enclaves are launched on that platform. The
launch enclave (LE) is an Intel SGX architectural enclave that is responsible for generating a launch token for an application enclave,
which is used with the SGX instructions. The default signer for the LE is Intel, but FLC allows the platform owner to specify the LE
authorizing party as part of the BIOS Intel SGX setup.

3.1.3 Data Center Attestation Primitives (DCAP)

Attestation is the process of cryptographically demonstrating that the software is instantiated as expected on the platform. Intel
SGX allows infrastructure, data center, or platform owners (for example, CoSPs, CSPs, OEMs, Enterprises) to deploy their own
ECDSA attestation infrastructure for Intel SGX enclave attestation.

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Figure 3: Intel® SGX Data Center Attestation Deployment Architecture

Figure 3 shows the flow for enabling a data center customer to deploy their remote attestation service to provide attestation
services to their tenants.
1. Intel SGX PCK Cert ID Retrieval Tools run on the Intel SGX capable platform.
2. The Caching Service retrieves the PCK certificates from the Intel SGX provisioning certification service (PCS) for Intel SGX-
enabled platforms. These retrieved data elements are signed by Intel, and, upon download and verification, these data
elements are stored in the caching service. Refer to Intel® SGX ECDSA Attestation DCAP and APIs document for detailed
steps on registration and API key procurement.
3. Intel SGX quote generation library (QGL) generates ECDSA-based remote attestation quotes using Intel SGX architectural
software. Intel SGX QGL exposes a set of APIs that the application can use to generate the quote.
Intel provides quote verification library (QVL) reference code, which offers APIs to enable ECDSA quote verification. The ECDSA
Quote format is used both by the QGL on the platform and by the QVL in the data center customer attestation service.

3.1.4 Enclave Remote Attestation

Remote attestation is the foundational security step upon which the Intel SGX enclave runs the intended code and data. The
process of enclave build on the target server is performed by the untrusted software, and therefore, only after a successful
verification of the instantiated enclave should any secrets be provisioned into the enclave. The enclave library should NOT contain
any security sensitive material (for example, keys) during initialization. These materials should be securely provisioned directly into
the enclave or generated by the enclave after it is successfully created and initialized.

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Figure 4: Intel® SGX Remote Attestation

The following steps describe a process for application enclave attestation. Refer to Intel SGX reference documentation for details.
1. The remote customer attestation server may initiate an attestation protocol, including sending a random challenge to the
untrusted application running Key Management enclave.
2. The untrusted application sends these parameters to the Key Management enclave. The enclave may add any additional
parameters (for example, an enclave-generated RSA public key) and create a list of parameters to be signed by CPU.
3. Enclave calls the Intel SGX API instructions via Intel SGX SDK to generate an Intel SGX signed report.
4. Enclave sends this report to the Intel SGX architectural software, which verifies this report. If verified, the CPU signs it with
the customer’s ECDSA attestation key.
5. The CPU sends the signed report (quote) to the application.
6. Application sends this signed quote to the remote customer attestation server along with any additional parameters (for
example, root keys).
7. The remote attestation server verifies this quote and verifies any additional security parameters (for example, root keys)
necessary for authenticating the endpoint enclave.
8. After verification, the key server can provision secrets into the application enclave on the compute platform.

3.2 Customer Private Key Security - Use Case

Securing customer keys has become an industry and customer priority. This task is especially important for third-party software
running on a cloud infrastructure, or on hosted environments as in edge and 5G deployments, and in commercial infrastructure
systems. All types of workloads that deal with keys have a genuine business reason to ensure that these keys are never exposed in
the clear or stolen by adversaries. The monetary and reputation costs of loss of private key can be high, and private key
replacements in large deployments is not a trivial activity. Based on customer-prioritized usage for key security, we focus on using
NGINX as the primary example application and illustrate an Intel SGX easy-to-deploy reference solution on 3rd and 4th Gen Intel®
Xeon® Scalable processor, which enhances private key security for NGINX workloads.

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3.2.1 NGINX KMRA Flow with Intel® SGX

Figure 5. NGINX KMRA Flow with Intel SGX

As shown in Figure 5, the key management flow of NGINX with Intel SGX has three main steps.

3.2.1.1 Step 1 - SGX Enclave Launch with DCAP Attestation

A compute node has Intel SGX enabled and Crypto API Toolkit for Intel® Software Guard Extensions (Crypto API Toolkit for Intel®
SGX) installed. An Intel SGX quote is generated inside the Crypto API Toolkit for Intel SGX enclave for DCAP attestation. The Intel
SGX quote is attested on the key server side.

3.2.1.2 Step 2 - Customer Key Delivery into Enclave

The wrapped private key is provisioned by the key server into the Crypto API Toolkit for Intel® SGX enclave. The private key is never
exposed in the clear outside of the key server or the SGX enclave.

3.2.1.3 Step 3 - NGINX Application Uses the Key Protected Inside the Enclave
The NGINX workload can more securely access the private key through the PKCS#11 interface using the libp11 engine configured
with OpenSSL. NGINX can establish a TLS connection using the private key from the Crypto API Toolkit for Intel® SGX enclave. Since
the private key is never exposed in the clear outside of the enclave, NGINX uses PKCS#11 APIs to perform private key operations
inside the enclave.

3.2.2 KMRA Software Design and Architecture

KMRA is proof-of-concept software created to demonstrate the integration of Intel SGX asymmetric key capability running in the
NGINX application, with a backend attestation and key server.
KMRA service node is a centralized key server that provisions wrapped keys to the compute node. A Flask REST API runs on the
service node with Connexion verifying all incoming requests. The REST API uses a Cython wrapper for C to interact with SoftHSMv2,
to wrap and extract keys through the PKCS#11 interface.
To validate the client, mutual TLS is implemented on the service node where each client certificate is verified. The client certificate
must be generated by a mutual CA. Subject OUN extracted from the certificate maps to permissions and keys in the configuration
file. KMRA compute node is a client running on an Intel SGX-enabled platform. The client sends a request to the service node
containing an Intel® SGX quote, a public key from Crypto API Toolkit for Intel SGX, and a unique ID to identify the key pair to extract.
The client constructs the requests by using json-c and sends requests by using libcurl. The Intel SGX quote of a client is validated by
the quote verification library (QVL) on the service node before the encrypted keys are released by the SoftHSM key server and sent
back to the compute node for provisioning into the enclave. When the client receives a response containing wrapped keys, the
server certificate is validated, and the keys are imported into Crypto API Toolkit for Intel SGX. For NGINX to access the secured
private key provisioned by the service node, a libp11 engine is configured with OpenSSL. The libp11 engine is an interface for
NGINX to access keys secured by Crypto API Toolkit for Intel SGX.

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Figure 6: KMRA NGINX/Intel® SGX Key Management Software Design

3.2.3 Intel® SGX PKCS#11 Provider Crypto - Toolkit

The Crypto API Toolkit for Intel® SGX is based on SoftHSMv2, an open-source cryptographic library that provides a PKCS#11
interface to the application. Most PKCS#11 enabled applications (for example. HSMs, OpenSSL) can use this toolkit. This toolkit is a
functional subset implementation of the PKCS#11 standard 1.

Figure 7: Crypto API Toolkit for Intel® SGX Software Architecture

The Crypto API Toolkit for Intel® SGX may not support the exhaustive list of all PKCS#11 APIs and mechanisms defined in the
standard. Rather, it supports algorithms and parameters that are sufficient for common cloud applications. This toolkit can be used
as a baseline reference enclave. You are expected to extend it with additional capabilities and security validation, as required.
The toolkit embeds Intel’s SGX SSL crypto library, and in addition supports Intel SGX enclave capabilities for purposes of local
attestation to the quoting enclave and for remote attestation.

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3.2.4 Enclave Attestation Using KMRA Key Server

Intel® SGX provides an enclave remote attestation mechanism. This mechanism allows a remote provider to verify the following:
1. The enclave is running on a real Intel processor inside an Intel SGX enclave.
2. The platform is running at the latest security level (also referred to as the trusted computing base [TCB] version).
3. Identity of the enclave.
4. The enclave has not been compromised.

After verifying these parameters and any additional security checks, the remote attestation and key server can then provision
secrets more securely into the enclave.
For more information on KMRA REST API endpoints, refer to the KMRA User Guide: Intel® Software Guard Extensions (Intel® SGX) -
Key Management Reference Application (KMRA) on Intel® Xeon® Processors User Guide.

4 Deployment
4.1 Automated Intel® SGX Deployment with Ansible
KMRA provides Ansible environment setup scripts for installing Intel SGX components and KMRA dependencies. The full demo can
be set up with Ansible scripts to showcase attestation, key provisioning, and NGINX workload setup.
The Intel® Software Guard Extensions (Intel® SGX) - Key Management Reference Application (KMRA) on Intel® Xeon® Processors User
Guide contains step-by-step instructions for running the Ansible scripts.

4.2 Containerized KMRA

KMRA can be deployed in three containers: Key Server, Client, and PCCS.

Figure 8: KMRA SW Design and Deployment Using Docker Images

Dockerfiles are provided in KMRA source code and Docker images are provided on Docker Hub.
Refer to the Intel® Software Guard Extensions (Intel® SGX) - Key Management Reference Application (KMRA) on Intel® Xeon®
Processors User Guide for more information.

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5 Bare Metal Reference Architecture (BMRA) Integration

Each release of the container Bare Metal Reference Architecture (BMRA) integrates and validates the latest cloud-native software
from the open-source community with the latest Intel technology for acceleration, packet processing, observability, power
management, automation, and more security on 3rd and 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processor-based platforms. With each release,
new documents are added to the various Experience Kits for guidance on best practice implementation, technical overviews, use
cases, and tutorials. These documents are available at https://networkbuilders.intel.com/intel-technologies/network-
transformation-exp-kits.
BMRA contains the following security capabilities: Kubernetes cluster security features, Intel® Security Libraries for Data Center
(Intel® SecL - DC), Intel SGX, KMRA with Intel SGX, OpenSSL, and Intel® QuickAssist Technology (QAT) Engine, MTLs in Service Mesh,
a Trusted Certificate Service (TCS) and a Trusted Attestation Controller. A description of these capabilities can be found in Network
and Cloud Edge Reference System Architectures Portfolio Manual.
The BMRA provides easy cloud-native platform installation through Ansible scripts with the aforementioned security mechanisms
including the KMRA Docker image from Docker Hub to set up KMRA. The KMRA Key Server, PCCS, and KMRA Client with workload
are deployed into a cluster to showcase the full KMRA function. A private key is more securely provisioned to an attested Intel SGX
Enclave and used by the NGINX workload. Step-by-step instructions for deploying KMRA with BMRA are detailed in the Network and
Cloud Edge Container Bare Metal Reference System Architecture User Guide.

5.1 Service Mesh support

KMRA Key Server integration with Service Mesh is available in BMRA.
For the Manual Key Management use case with Service Mesh, two sample applications were created in KMRA. SGX quote and public
key are manually downloaded from the SM cluster and stored in the filesystem. km-attest is used to attest an SGX quote with the
public key and km-wrap is used to create a wrapped private key and encrypted symmetric wrapping key. The wrapped data is
uploaded back to a CRD in the cluster using the kubectl command. These steps are automated in BMRA 22.01.

Figure 9. km-wrap and km-attest Sample App SW Design in KMRA

For the Automate Key Management use case with SM, the KMRA REST API in Key Server was modified and integrated with a go
plugin in the SM cluster. KMRA REST API is queried by the Trusted Attestation Controller to provision wrapped keys into the cluster.
detailed information and use cases, see https://github.com/intel/trusted-attestation-controller.

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5.2 Secure Key Management with Intel® Smart Edge Open

Key Management Reference Application (KMRA) provides end to end solution for run time protection of customer private keys by
provisioning them into Intel SGX enclaves. It is deployed on AWS cloud and Crypto-toolkit along with NGINX workload. It supports
Multitenancy by running multiple instances of Intel SGX enclaves. It also demonstrates the integration of Intel Software Guard
Extensions asymmetric key capability with a hardware security model (HSM) on a centralized key server. This reference application
sets up NGINX workload to access the private key in an Intel SGX enclave on the 3rd Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors, using the
Public-Key Cryptography Standard (PKCS) #11 interface and OpenSSL. Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol for applications that
help secure communications over computer networks against eavesdropping is widely used by internet servers, including majority
of HTTPS websites. KMRA uses Data Center Attestation Primitives (DCAP) libraries for generating and verifying that the ECDSA
signed Intel SGX quote.
More information about Intel® Smart Edge Open Developer Experience Kit (DEK) can be found here: smart-edge-open/docs:
Documentation for experience kits that use Edge Software Provisioner for deployment. (github.com)

6 Summary
Intel® SGX provides a more secure environment for application owners to run their applications’ sensitive code and data inside an
Intel SGX enclave, enhancing protection of their enclave code and data from privileged software and applications. This guide
demonstrates an end-to-end reference architecture for using Intel SGX to protect private key for NGINX application. This document
focuses on making Intel SGX easy to use and deploy, illustrating the overall system architecture and software design components
that enabled the usage. This example can be extended to additional Intel SGX usages, applications, and deployments. It is
recommended that readers refer to this Intel SGX reference architecture and associated collateral to assist in development and
follow their security best practices in the deployment of their Intel SGX systems.

Performance varies by use, configuration and other factors. Learn more at www.Intel.com/PerformanceIndex.
No product or component can be absolutely secure.
Intel does not control or audit third-party data. You should consult other sources to evaluate accuracy.
No license (express or implied, by estoppel or otherwise) to any intellectual property rights is granted by this document.
The products described may contain design defects or errors known as errata which may cause the product to deviate from published
specifications. Current characterized errata are available on request.
Your costs and results may vary.
Intel technologies may require enabled hardware, software or service activation.
© Intel Corporation. Intel, the Intel logo, and other Intel marks are trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries. Other names and brands may
be claimed as the property of others.

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