Difference between TCPA-Hardware and a smart card (was: example: secure computing kernel needed)

[Carl Ellison]

We see here a difference between your and my sides of the Atlantic.  Here in
the US, almost no one has a smart card.

Of those cards you carry, how many are capable of doing public key
operations?  A simple memory smartcard doesn't count for what we were
talking about.

There are other problems with doing TCPA-like operations with a smartcard,
but I didn't go into those.  The biggest one to chew on is that I, the
computer owner, need verification that my software is in good shape.  My
agent in my computer (presumably the smartcard) needs a way to examine the
software state of my computer without relying on any of the software in my
computer (which might have been corrupted, if the computer's S/W has been
corrupted).  This implies to me that my agent chip needs a H/W path for
examining all the S/W of my computer.  That's something the TPM gives us
that a smartcard doesn't (when that smartcard goes through a normal device
driver to access its machine).

 - Carl


+------------------------------------------------------------------+
|Carl M. Ellison         cme at acm.org      http://theworld.com/~cme |
|    PGP: 75C5 1814 C3E3 AAA7 3F31  47B9 73F1 7E3C 96E7 2B71       |
+---Officer, arrest that man. He's whistling a copyrighted song.---+ 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ben Laurie [mailto:ben at algroup.co.uk] 
> Sent: Friday, December 19, 2003 2:42 AM
> To: Carl Ellison
> Cc: 'Stefan Lucks'; cryptography at metzdowd.com
> Subject: Re: Difference between TCPA-Hardware and a smart 
> card (was: example: secure computing kernel needed)
> 
> Carl Ellison wrote:
> > It is an advantage for a TCPA-equipped platform, IMHO.  
> Smart cards cost
> > money. Therefore, I am likely to have at most 1.
> 
> If I glance quickly through my wallet, I find 7 smartcards 
> (all credit 
> cards). Plus the one in my phone makes 8. So, run that "at most 1" 
> argument past me again?
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Ben.
> 
> -- 
> http://www.apache-ssl.org/ben.html       http://www.thebunker.net/
> 
> "There is no limit to what a man can do or how far he can go if he
> doesn't mind who gets the credit." - Robert Woodruff
> 

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