A Secure and Efficient USB-based In-band Communication Interface between Host and BMC
Hongwei Liu, Haojun Xia, Bibo Tu, Da Zhang, Xiaotong Wang · 2022
In data centers, the server monitoring and man-agement functions are offloaded to the baseboard management controller integrated in the server. New requirements emerge with the development of cloud computing technology. Deep communication between the host and the baseboard management controller through the in-band communication interface is nec-essary. However, the existing interfaces have limitations in terms of security and performance. In this paper, we propose a secure and efficient USB-based in-band communication interface. We separate it into the transport layer and the protocol layer. The transport model for the transport layer uses USB as the hardware connection, abstracts the physical USB channel into multiple virtual channels, and provides hardware-independent interfaces for the protocol layer. The message protocol for the protocol layer can perform authentication and securely transport management messages. We verify the effectiveness of the transport model using SPIN and the security of the message protocol using BAN logic. We also implement the proposed interface to a server with an AST2400 baseboard management controller and implement three management functions. The security analysis and performance evaluation show that the proposed interface is secure and efficient, which meets the in-band management requirements.