“The Trusted Computing Group is an industry consortium that’s trying to build more secure computers. It has a lot of members, although the board of directors consists of Microsoft, Sony, Advanced Micro Devices, Intel, IBM, Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard and two smaller companies that are voted in on a rotating basis,” Bruce Schneier writes for CNET. “The basic idea is that you build a computer from the ground up securely, with a core hardware “root of trust” called a Trusted Platform Module, or TPM. Applications can run securely on the computer, communicate with other applications and their owners securely, and be sure that no untrusted applications have access to their data or code.”
“In May, the Trusted Computing Group published a best practices document: Design, Implementation, and Usage Principles for TPM-Based Platforms . Written for users and implementers of TCG technology, the document tries to draw a line between good uses and bad uses of this technology,” Schneier writes. “it’s a good document and we should all hope that companies follow it. Compliance is totally voluntary, but it’s the kind of document that governments and large corporations can point to and demand that vendors follow. But there’s something fishy going on. Microsoft is doing its best to stall the document, and to ensure that it doesn’t apply to Vista, Microsoft’s next-generation operating system.”
Full article here.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Apple could use Trusted Platform Module chip to keep Mac OS X off non-Macs – June 14, 2005
