AWS Nitro Secure Module Driver Going Upstream For Linux 6.8

As part of AWS Nitro Enclaves, coming for the Linux 6.8 kernel in the new year is a Nitro Secure Module driver.

When running Linux within a Nitro Enclaves on Amazon Web Services (AWS), the hypervisor exposes a VirtIO device called the Nitro Secure Module (NSM). The AWS Nitro Secure Module can provide attestation reports, modify the PCR state, and provide entropy to the cloud instance (VM).

With the patch set to be mainlined for Linux 6.8, the Nitro Secure Module is exposed to the guest via the /dev/nsm device node for interacting with this security module. The driver also provides a hardware random number generator (HWRNG) back-end.

AWS Nitro Enclaves are intended as an extra level of isolation for Amazon EC2 instances to protect highly sensitive data. Linux distributions running on EC2 have already been patched with Nitro Enclaves support while now the driver is going upstream for Linux 6.8.

This AWS "NSM" kernel driver has been queued into char-misc-next ahead of Linux 6.8 opening in January.