Remote Credential Management with Mutual Attestation for Trusted Execution Environments

Abstract: Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) are rapidly emerging as a root-of-trust for protecting sensitive applications and data using hardware-backed isolated worlds of execution. TEEs provide robust assurances regarding critical algorithm execution, tamper-resistant credential storage, and platform integrity using remote attestation. However, the challenge of remotely managing credentials between TEEs remains largely unaddressed in existing literature. In this work, we present novel protocols using mutual attestation for supporting four aspects of secure remote credential management with TEEs: backups, updates, migration, and revocation. The proposed protocols are agnostic to the underlying TEE implementation and subjected to formal verification using Scyther, which found no attacks.