by Rajiv Andrade, Linux Technology Center

Since the foundation of the Trusted Computing Group, previously named Trusted Computing Platform Alliance, the pillars required to win most of today’s security challenges have been heavily developed.

The Trusted Platform Module and the Trusted Software Stack are two of these. Now that we have in our hands the required enablement, the next expected step is to come up with the development of detailed and implementable use cases that were originally envisioned when starting the Trusted Computing Initiative. The use case presented in this newly published Blueprint exploits the integrity measurement capability that the TPM provides. Other than using a passphrase as an authorization token, it describes how to use a machine’s integrity to authorize access to sensitive files, by means of a key sealed to those integrity parameters.

The parameters include the loaded kernel image, the bootloader and its configuration file, and the BIOS. Thus, if one tries to load a different flawed kernel image, those sensitive files won’t be accessible. It’s also worth mentioning that the bootloader used is able also to measure critical system files (e.g. the libraries placed at /lib), making the job of a rootkit even harder.

The next step is to attest a machine’s integrity using the Integrity Measurements Architecture (IMA) logs that contain a list of measurements of all files accessed by the root user during runtime.

Check it out at: http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/lnxinfo/v3r0m0/topic/liaai/tpm/liaaitpmstart.htm