Other uses of TCPA

[Eugen Leitl]

On Sat, 3 Aug 2002, James A. Donald wrote:

> The TPM has its own secret key, it makes the corresponding public 
> key widely available to everyone, and its own internal good known
> time.  So  when your customer's payment goes through, you then

Trusted time is a useful concept. I presume the time is set by the 
manufacturer. Given current clock accuracy and limited lifetime of backup 
power I presume it is possible to adjust the time via trusted timeservers.
Do they mention anything like this in the specs?

> send him a  copy of your stuff encrypted to his TPM, a copy which
> only his TPM  can make use of.  Your code, which the TPM decrypts
> and executes,  looks at the known good time, and if the user is
> out of time, refuses to play.   

Is there any reason to believe the implementers are telling us everything,
and will implement the specs as advertised? I mean, consider the source. 
Sometimes it makes sense to look a gift horse in the mouth, especially if 
it's made from wood.