Edit

Basic Concepts

  • Article

This article defines some basic concepts related to Microsoft Azure Attestation.

JSON Web Token (JWTs)

JSON Web Token (JWT) is an open standard RFC7519 method for securely transmitting information between parties as a JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) object. This information can be verified and trusted because it is digitally signed. JWTs can be signed using a secret or a public/private key pair.

JSON Web Key (JWK)

JSON Web Key (JWK) is a JSON data structure that represents a cryptographic key. This specification also defines a JWK Set JSON data structure that represents a set of JWKs.

Attestation provider

Attestation provider belongs to Azure resource provider named Microsoft.Attestation. The resource provider is a service endpoint that provides Azure Attestation REST contract and is deployed using Azure Resource Manager. Each attestation provider honors a specific, discoverable policy. Attestation providers get created with a default policy for each attestation type (note that VBS enclave has no default policy). See examples of an attestation policy for more details on the default policy for SGX.

Attestation request

Attestation request is a serialized JSON object sent by client application to attestation provider. The request object for SGX enclave has two properties:

  • "Quote" – The value of the "Quote" property is a string containing a Base64URL encoded representation of the attestation quote.
  • "EnclaveHeldData" – The value of the "EnclaveHeldData" property is a string containing a Base64URL encoded representation of the Enclave Held Data.

Azure Attestation validates the provided "Quote" to ensure that the SHA256 hash of the provided Enclave Held Data is expressed in the first 32 bytes of the reportData field in the quote.

Attestation policy

Attestation policy is used to process the attestation evidence and is configurable by customers. The core of Azure Attestation is a policy engine, which processes claims constituting the evidence. Policies are used to determine whether Azure Attestation shall issue an attestation token based on evidence (or not), and thus endorse the Attester (or not). Accordingly, failure to pass all the policies results in no JWT token being issued.

If the default policy in the attestation provider doesn’t meet the needs, customers are able to create custom policies in any of the regions supported by Azure Attestation. Policy management is a key feature provided to customers by Azure Attestation. Policies are attestation type specific and can be used to identify enclaves or add claims to the output token or modify claims in an output token.

See examples of an attestation policy.

Benefits of policy signing

An attestation policy is what ultimately determines if an attestation token is issued by Azure Attestation. Policy also determines the claims to be generated in the attestation token. It is crucial that the policy evaluated by the service is the policy written by the administrator, and that it has not been tampered or modified by external entities.

Trust model defines the authorization model of attestation provider to define and update policy. Two models are supported – one based on Microsoft Entra authorization and one based on possession of customer-managed cryptographic keys (referred as isolated model). Isolated model enables Azure Attestation to ensure that the customer-submitted policy is not tampered.

In isolated model, administrator creates an attestation provider specifying a set of trusted signing X.509 certificates in a file. The administrator can then add a signed policy to the attestation provider. Azure Attestation, while processing the attestation request, validates the signature of the policy using the public key represented by either the "jwk" or the "x5c" parameter in the header. Azure Attestation verifies if public key in the request header is in the list of trusted signing certificates associated with the attestation provider. In this way, the relying party (Azure Attestation) can trust a policy signed using the X.509 certificates it knows about.

See examples of policy signer certificate for samples.

Attestation token

Azure Attestation response is a JSON string whose value contains JWT. Azure Attestation packages the claims and generates a signed JWT. The signing operation is performed using a self-signed certificate with subject name matching the AttestUri element of the attestation provider.

The Get OpenID Metadata API returns an OpenID Configuration response as specified by the OpenID Connect Discovery protocol. The API retrieves metadata about the signing certificates in use by Azure Attestation.

See examples of attestation token.

Encryption of data at rest

To safeguard customer data, Azure Attestation persists its data in Azure Storage. Azure storage provides encryption of data at rest as the data is written into data centers, and decrypts it for customers to access it. This encryption occurs using a Microsoft managed encryption key.

In addition to protecting data in Azure storage, Azure Attestation also leverages Azure Disk Encryption (ADE) to encrypt service VMs. For Azure Attestation running in an enclave in Azure confidential computing environments, ADE extension is currently not supported. In such scenarios, to prevent data from being stored in-memory, page file is disabled.

No customer data is being persisted on the Azure Attestation instance local hard disk drives.

Next steps