"Lincoln Laboratory’s Cloud Security Software Is Released Into Red Hat Enterprise Linux"
Red Hat, a global open-source software leader, has integrated the Keylime package into its Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL 9.1) operating system. MIT Lincoln Laboratory developed Keylime, which is a security software architecture. With the inclusion of the architecture in RHEL 9.1, it is now broadly available to the large and diverse community of RHEL users from industry, academia, and government. Keylime was developed to help customers of cloud, edge, and Internet of Things (IoT) computing services improve their machines' security and reliability. Cloud computing services enable companies to rent machines from a cloud provider responsible for the security of those rented machines. While cloud providers say that their machines are secure, users have no way of verifying the security of the cloud. Therefore, many companies with sensitive data are hesitant to take advantage of the cloud's flexibility and low cost. In order to address this security concern, Keylime uses a piece of hardware known as a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) to remotely and continually verify that the machines hosting and processing an organization's data are secure. When data is tampered with, the hash (i.e., a string of characters representing data) generated by TPM changes considerably. Keylime was created to make TPMs compatible with cloud technologies, and it reacts in seconds to a TPM hash change to shut down a compromised machine. Users can also securely upload cryptographic keys, passwords, and certificates into rented workstations without disclosing these secrets to the cloud provider using Keylime. This article continues to discuss the release of MIT Lincoln Laboratory's Keylime cloud security software into Red Hat's RHEL 9.1 operating system.