A Practical Guide to Trusted Computing

Chapter 2

Design Goals of the Trusted Platform Module

In addition to privacy support, the Trusted Computing Group (TCG) technical committee had a number of design goals for the Trusted Platform Module (TPM). It was important that the design have the capability to do the following:

• Securely report the environment that booted
• Securely store data
• Securely identify the user and system (without encountering privacy concerns)
• Support standard security systems and protocols
• Support multiple users on the same system while preserving security among them
• Be produced inexpensively

Of course, “secure” is a relative term. Given enough resources, anything can be hacked. The relative security of personal computers (PCs) prior to TCG was fairly low, so any ...