CICI: UCSS: FILOLI: Auditable and Side-Channel-Resilient Confidential Computing Infrastructure

Collaborative science depends on trusted shared computing infrastructure, where institutions pool sensitive data such as medical records and proprietary models for joint analysis. Confidential computing offers a hardware-assisted foundation for creating trusted execution environments where such sensitive computations can run without exposing data to cloud operators or collaborating parties. However, today's confidential computing platforms still face two major gaps: privileged system software and shared hardware can leak secrets through side channels, and most systems provide limited evidence that computations were executed with adequate privacy, integrity, and accountability. This project develops FILOLI, an auditable and side-channel-resilient confidential computing infrastructure for collaborative science. FILOLI integrates CPU-based confidential virtual machines with graphics processing unit trusted execution environments to support secure accelerated workloads. Its first thrust confines the privileged host runtime using a hardware root of trust, Trusted Platform Module measurements, and runtime code admission, ensuring that the hypervisor and host services remain in a known-good state while minimizing unnecessary interfaces and shared-resource exposure. Its second thrust enforces secure execution inside confidential virtual machines through a monitor that mediates sensitive operations and produces cryptographically sealed, append-only audit records. Remote attestation links these records to genuine hardware so collaborators and auditors can verify platform integrity and the integrity and completeness of the logs. The project releases open-source prototypes, benchmarks, and toolkits, integrates research artifacts into education and training activities, and helps strengthen the national cybersecurity workforce. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria. NSF Award ID: 2613950 | Program: 01002627DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT | Principal Investigator: Mengyuan Li | Institution: University of Southern California, LOS ANGELES, CA | Award Amount: $600,000 View on NSF Award Search: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/show-award/?AWD_ID=2613950 View on Research.gov: https://www.research.gov/awardapi-service/v1/awards/2613950.html