Hal Finney’s Experimental Privacy CA
A longstanding limitation of doing remote attestation between “strangers” has been eased through some experimental work that Hal Finney recently announced on the TrouSerS user’s list. Hal has announced that he has created a Privacy CA at PrivacyCA.com. Question 2.1 of the TrouSerS FAQ contains a graphic showing the prerequisite pieces for doing remote attestation. Hal has filled in the Privacy CA and notes that Infineon does supply the Endorsement Credential. He also provides a “test and debug mode” so that users of other TPMs can still experiment with the service without the guarantee that they are using real TPMs. Up to now, attestation keys had to be exchanged via sneaker net (manual exchange and verification before attestation was possible) to enable machines to do remote attestation. Hal’s announcement represents a great leap forward in the usefulness of TPMs.