US Patent 8954965 Trusted execution environment virtual machine cloning

Cloning of a virtual machine having a trusted executed environment such as a software-based trusted platform module. In order to clone the virtual machine, the virtual machine state of the source virtual machine is copied to formulate a target virtual machine state that is to be associated with a target virtual machine. The target virtual machine is a clone of the source virtual machine state, and thus the storage hierarchy of the trusted execution environment may be the same for the trusted execution environment in the source and target virtual machine states. However, because the identity of the target virtual machine is different than that of the source virtual machine, the endorsement hierarchy of the target virtual machine state is altered such that it is based on the identity of the target virtual machine, rather than the source virtual machine.