​​The Security Design of the AWS Nitro System

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/whitepapers/latest/security-design-of-aws-nitro-system/the-nitro-system-journey.html

The AWS Nitro System is a combination of purpose-built server designs, data processors, system management components, and specialized firmware which provide the underlying platform for all Amazon EC2 instances launched since the beginning of 2018.

Three key components of the Nitro System achieve these goals:
◻️ Purpose-built Nitro Cards — Hardware devices designed by AWS that provide overall system control and input/output (I/O) virtualization independent of the main system board with its CPUs and memory.
◻️ The Nitro Security Chip — Enables a secure boot process for the overall system based on a hardware root of trust, the ability to offer bare metal instances, as well as defense in depth that offers protection to the server from unauthorized modification of system firmware.
◻️ The Nitro Hypervisor — A deliberately minimized and firmware-like hypervisor designed to provide strong resource isolation, and performance that is nearly indistinguishable from a bare metal server.

This paper provides a high-level introduction to virtualization and the fundamental architectural change introduced by the Nitro System.

#Nitro #security