Title: TRUSTED COMPUTING BEYOND THE TCG SPECIFICATIONS

Trusted Computing beyond the TCG Specifications

As explained in chapter 3, Trusted Computing comprises a set of functionalities and mechanisms based on which a system can be regarded as “trusted”. The TCG aims at defining a set of specifications related to the TPM, which is crucial for providing the Trusted Computing features on a platform. However, some important Trusted Computing concepts are not directly addressed by the TCG specifications. In fact, many scientists argue that adding a TPM to a platform with an unmodified mainstream operating system does not introduce a considerable improvement to the security of the system. 

Suitable operating systems support for TCG specifications seems to be necessary. Process isolation and secure input/output paths between applications and users are examples of important features that need to be provided by the system in order for the Trusted Computing TPM functionalities to be efficient. For this reason, security kernels able to run several environments in parallel – based on virtualization – are being considered to provide such features. More over, manufacturers are introducing security enhancements to their CPUs, input and output devices to provide such environments isolation on a same platform. 

In the following, we give an overview of the different efforts for providing operating systems and hardware support for the TCG specifications.