Overcoming the potential downside of TCPA

[Ben Laurie]

Joseph Ashwood wrote:
> Lately on both of these lists there has been quite some discussion about
> TCPA and Palladium, the good, the bad, the ugly, and the anonymous. :)
> However there is something that is very much worth noting, at least about
> TCPA.
> 
> There is nothing stopping a virtualized version being created.
> 
> There is nothing that stops say VMWare from synthesizing a system view that
> includes a virtual TCPA component. This makes it possible to (if desired)
> remove all cryptographic protection.
> 
> Of course such a software would need to be sold as a "development tool" but
> we all know what would happen. Tools like VMWare have been developed by
> others, and as I recall didn't take all that long to do. As such they can be
> anonymously distributed, and can almost certainly be stored entirely on a
> boot CD, using the floppy drive to store the keys (although floppy drives
> are no longer a "cool" thing to have in a system), boot from the CD, it runs
> a small kernel that virtualizes and allows debugging of the TPM/TSS which
> allows the viewing, copying and replacement of private keys on demand.
> 
> Of course this is likely to quickly become illegal, or may already, but that
> doesn't stop the possibility of creating such a system. For details on how
> to create this virtualized TCPA please refer to the TCPA spec.

What prevents this from being useful is the lack of an appropriate 
certificate for the private key in the TPM.

Cheers,

Ben.

-- 
http://www.apache-ssl.org/ben.html       http://www.thebunker.net/

Available for contract work.

"There is no limit to what a man can do or how far he can go if he
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