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

[Ben Laurie]

Carl Ellison wrote:
> 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.

I don't know. If you can tell me how to find out, I'd be happy to 
investigate. I have quite a few that are no longer needed, so 
destructive investigation is possible :-)

BTW, I forgot the two smartcards that are used by my Sky satellite TV stuff.

> 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).

I'm not arguing with this - just the economic argument about number of 
smartcards.

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
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