COMP 3000 Essay 2 2010 Question 4
Accountable Virtual Machines
Authors: Andreas Haeberlen, Paarijaat Aditya, Rodrigo Rodrigues, Peter Druschel
Affiliates: University of Pennsylvania, Max Planck Institute for Software Systems (MPI-SWS)]
Link to Paper: Accountable Virtual Machines
Background Concepts
Research problem
The research presented in this paper tries to tackle a problem that has haunted computer scientists for a long time. How can you be sure that the software running on a remote machine is working correctly or as intended. Cloud computing, online multi-player games, and other online services such as auctions are only a few examples that rely on a trust relation between users and a host. When a node (user or computer) expects some sort of result or feedback from another node, they would hope that that interaction being done would be independent of the node and only dependent on the intended software. Let's say, that node A interacts with node B with execution exe1 and node A interacts with node C also with ex1, but node C has been modified and respond with exe2. Thus, we can assume that the respond of B and C will be different. Being able to prove that the node C has been modified without any doubt is the purpose of this paper.