ETD

• AMD
• Confidential Computing
• Emulation
• QEMU
• SEV

This thesis aims to extend QEMU with the emulation of AMD Secure Encrypted Virtualization (SEV), enabling the development and testing of SEV-aware guest software without access to dedicated AMD server hardware.

The primary objective of this work is to design and implement a new object that extends the existing SEV guest implementation, so as to present the virtual machine with the same hardware interfaces it would encounter on a physical AMD SEV host. The proposed object reproduces the CPU identification signals and activation mechanisms expected by SEV-aware software, and faithfully reconstructs the complete attestation workflow through which a guest owner can inject secrets into guest memory. To this end, the design adopts the QEMU Object Model inheritance mechanism, enabling the new object to build upon the established SEV infrastructure and to remain fully compatible with the management interface through which the attestation process is orchestrated.

Memory encryption, key management, and cryptographic security guarantees fall outside the scope of this work, as the emulation is intended for local development and testing environments.