Defence of doctoral thesis in the field of Computer Science, M.Sc. Arseny Kurnikov

Cloud providers often process sensitive data. Users trust the providers based on their reputation. However, if a cloud provider is compromised, users' data is at risk. Hardware security technologies such as Trusted Platform Modules (TPMs) or Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) can be utilized to provide an additional layer of security and mitigate the risks. This dissertation studied how to apply TEEs in cloud computing, identified challenges, and suggested possible solutions. Previously, research focused on utilizing TEEs on the client side, or on using TPMs in the cloud.

The main results of the dissertation are two TEEs applications to enhance security in the cloud; a novel remote attestation protocol to support the applications; a migration framework that supports TEEs in the cloud; and a resource measurement framework based on TEEs. The dissertation describes general principles and guidelines when developing trusted applications that need to support cloud-based deployments, carries out an analysis of the requirements and limitations of TEE-supporting Virtual Machine (VM) migration, and shows how TEEs can be utilized in the cloud to support resource measurements.

Cloud providers begin to support TEEs in their offerings, and the results obtained in the dissertation are relevant in real-world scenarios. Privacy and security of users' data become more and more important as digitalization keeps spreading into various areas of human lives. Hardware technologies can assist in reducing the trust that the users put in cloud providers.

Opponent: Associate Professor Mika Ylianttila, University of Oulu, Finland

Custos: Professor N Asokan, Aalto University School of Science, Department of Computer Science

Contact details of the doctoral student: [email protected], +358449666638

The public defence will be organised via Zoom. Link to the event

The thesis is publicly displayed 10 days before the defence in the publication archive Aaltodoc of Aalto University. 

Electronic thesis