CDR: Hardware support for trusted pc

[David Honig]

Basically next year you could get a motherboard with a security module
onboard.  Which is both your friend, and not.

The last EETimes-print-edition had an article with *much* more info but I
found the following online.  You can comment on the www.trustedpc.org
stuff until October, on their site; they have whitepapers.  




Coprocessors Move
              Security Onto PC
              Motherboards
              (09/05/00, 6:51 p.m. ET) By Junko Yoshida , EE Times 

              SAN MATEO, Calif. -- Responding to
              industry demand for better built-in
              security, vendors of PC chips and
              smart-card ICs are racing to develop
              security coprocessors that mount on a PC
              motherboard. 

              Architectural approaches vary, but
              suppliers agree that this new design socket
              will start showing up in motherboards as
              early as the middle of next year. 

              Integrating a security chip makes it
              possible "to view the PC as an endpoint
              for the delivery of goods and services" in
              the digital economy, said Geoffrey
              Strongin, platform security architect at
              Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (stock:
              AMD), Sunnyvale, Calif. 

              AMD is one of the PC chip makers
              readying a security device. 

              The trend is to move "core security and
              e-commerce functions out to the edge of
              the Internet, and place them in all endpoint
              devices including the user's PC,"
              concurred Steven Sprague, president and
              chief executive officer at Wave Systems
              Corp. (stock: WAVX), Lee, Mass., which
              fields the Embassy security chip and is
              working with AMD on a reference design.

              Promoters say that while much effort has
              gone into securing the network and the
              server-side infrastructure, until very
              recently the client has been overlooked.
              Thanks to advances in SSL software
              technology, the transmission of data
              across the Internet is more secure than
              ever. 

              But "vulnerability often exists at the PC
              and at the server," said Cees Jan Koomen,
              chairman of the board at security-chip
              vendor Pijnenburg Securealink, Vught,
              Netherlands, which is also developing a
              coprocessor. 

              "You need a cryptographic solution in
              hardware, placed at the server and PC
              terminal," he said. That way, "critical
              information, such as a key, is not available
              except inside the chip, while the hardware
              can accelerate the transaction speed." 

              Driving the security-coprocessor
              groundswell is an emerging specification
              being put together by the Trusted
              Computing Platform Alliance, an industry
              group founded by Compaq Computer
              Corp. (stock: CPQ), Houston;
              Hewlett-Packard Co. (stock: HWP), Palo
              Alto, Calif.; IBM Corp. (stock: IBM);
              Intel Corp. (stock: INTC), Santa Clara,
              Calif.; and Microsoft Corp. (stock:
              MSFT), Redmond, Wash.


http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB20000905S0019