OCP L.O.C.K., Caliptra 2.1, and MEK-MPA Use Cases

At the 2025 OCP Global Summit storage session, Google security experts Charles and Jeff presented OCP L.O.C.K. (Layered Open-source Cryptographic Key management) alongside the new TCG MEK-MPA multi-party authorization feature set. The talk covers why mutually distrustful entities need independent authorization, how MEK-MPA extends TCG Opal with 'access conditions' encapsulated via RFC 9180 hybrid public key encryption, and how lock's Caliptra-based key management block manages media encryption keys with data, multi-party, and epoch protection keys. It closes with a wide-ranging Q&A on post-quantum X.509, keeper.io support, security boundary layers, and OCP/TCG spec governance and CLAs.

Key Takeaways

OCP L.O.C.K. 1.0 and the TCG Opal 1.0 spec are both finalized and downloadable as of the talk, with ongoing work on the host-facing epoch-management API open to storage working group contributors.
MEK-MPA is a cross-compatible extension of TCG Opal (not a replacement) that introduces 'access conditions' so mutually distrustful entities like a CSP and a customer VM can each gate access independently without sharing secrets or co-locating them in one session.
Access-enabling secrets are encapsulated with RFC 9180 hybrid public key encryption, which combines a KEM, a KDF, and an encryption algorithm all declared in an X.509 certificate extension; post-quantum code points for this are still a few months out in IETF.
Lock's key management block, an extension in Caliptra, is the sole manager of media encryption keys and guards them with three protection-key types: per-MEK data protection keys (owned by drive firmware), many-to-one multi-party protection keys (mapping to access conditions), and a device-wide epoch protection key derived from a soft firmware key and a fuse-held hard key never visible to firmware.
There is roughly a one-to-one mapping between TCG MEK-MPA operations and the key management block APIs; the spec is independent of lock, but only the CHIPS Alliance Caliptra implementation may be called 'lock'.
Caliptra 2.1 with OCP lock was demonstrated live at the summit (Microsoft booth), and lock supports keeper.io by deriving an MEK from a host-provided DPK.