D3.9: Study on the Impact of Trusted Computing on Identity and Identity Management

Title: THE TRUSTED COMPUTING GROUP

The Trusted Computing Group

The Trusted Computing Group (TCG) evolved from the Trusted Computing Platform Alliance (TCPA) which was an industry working group focused on the development of trust and security mechanisms in computer platforms. It was formed by Compaq (today part of Hewlett-Packard), Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel and Microsoft in January 1999. 

In October 1999 the TCPA announced a draft specification and opened the possibility for other companies to join under a non-disclosure agreement. 

In August 2000 the first public version of the TCPA Specification was released for comments and has been published as TCPA Specification 1.0 in February 2001. This specification was platform independent and basically defined functions that must be provided by a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) (see section 3.1) from the viewpoint of a hardware manufacturer. 

The TPM Work Group, which has been formed in February 2001, revised the specification regarding practical implementation issues and error correction. This led to the TCPA Specification 1.1 which has been published in August 2001. Many specifications of non-hardware functions have been deferred to other TCPA Specifications. 

In September 2001 the TCPA PC Specific Work Group published its first specification [97]. This working group was set up to design a special specification for the PC platform. 

The next milestone was the TCPA Specification 1.1b [9] which has been released in May 2002. 

In April 2003, the TCPA was replaced by a non-profit organization [10], called Trusted Computing Group (TCG). The TCG adopted all TCPA Specifications and continued their development.

In addition to the PC Specific Work Group and the TPM Work Group, which have been adopted from the TCPA, the TCG established several other working groups. These are concerned with the development of specifications for mobile devices, PC clients, servers, storage systems, infrastructure for trusted computing, TCG Software Stack (TSS) (see section 3.2) and Trusted Network Connect (TNC) (see section 3.3). 

An overview on the activities of the working groups and the most important specifications will be given in section 2.2.4 and 3. 

In November 2003 the last major change to the TCG Specification has been published as TPM Main Specification 1.2 [101]. It essentially describes the platform independent functionality that must be provided by a TPM. 

Today the TCG has more than 120 members, including component and system vendors, software developers and network and infrastructure companies.

The TCG is incorporated as a non-profit organization with the goal of “the development, definition and promotion of hardware-enabled trusted computing and security technology, including related hardware and software components, across multiple platforms, peripherals and devices” [10].  

The TCG compliant technology has become widely available in the market. We list as TPM Manufacturers: Infineon, Atmel, Winbond/National Semiconductors, Sinosun, STMicroelectronics and Brodcom. As system integrators: Intel, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo-IBM, Dell, Futjitsu-Siemens Computers, Toshiba, Samsung Electornics, Arcom and Densitron. Firms providing TCG-enabled software: Hewlett-Packard, Infenion, Wave Systems, Softex, Uticamo, NTRU Cryptosystems and Lenovo-IBM.