A portable TPM based on USB key

Reviewer: Amos O Olagunju

Despite the Trusted Computing Group's specifications on security chips for storing cryptographic keys to protect information in trusted platform modules (TPMs), trusted computing between users and remote devices and verifiers poses major vulnerability challenges. The traditional TPM architectures create hash key summaries of hardware and software configurations to physically bind TPMs to specific hardware platforms, thus allowing business organizations to process electronic transactions securely. However, the secure transfer of keys among public endpoint platforms is still a major problem, despite the recently proposed architecture for a mobile TPM [1]. How should the issue of binding one TPM to a platform and several users to one TPM be resolved__?__ Zhang et al. propose a portable TPM (PTM) that: establishes trust with specific verifier devices in user-based TPM applications; assures that the trust chain is relayed back to users; performs remote verification and integrity assessment to reinstate secure data and keys; and overcomes the obligation of secure data to be bound to only a specific device. In the PTM paradigm, one user and several devices share one PTM. The PTM uses a protocol to establish a trusted path with the remote verifier and executes an encryption algorithm to certify the integrity of communication results. The PTM serves as a trusted backup module once it is the original TPM. The TPM utilizes the low pin count (LPC) bus, but the PTM exploits the universal serial bus (USB). The authors implemented a prototype PTM equipped with commands and program units that support the construction and activation of identities, rights administration, platform management, key storage and management, data encryption, integrity compilation, and details. The response times of the PTM commands varied between 0.66 and 94.64 milliseconds, with the majority of the commands executing in less than two milliseconds. The authors present realistic evidence to support the claim that a PTM based on a USB key is a special way to complement TPM with security and platform management routines that augment the overall security of user-based applications. Online Computing Reviews Service