When you think about computer security, things like antivirus software, firewalls, and spam removal tools probably come to mind. A new trusted-computing initiative from the Trusted Computing Platform Alliance (TCPA) is being touted as a mechanism to improve computer security. However, unless changes are made to its current design, TCPA will not improve computer security at all. Instead, it will only take control of your computer away from you.

The construct of trusted computing is not a new one and, in fact, references to it trace back to the 1970s. Various forms of trusted computing are the norm today in government agencies. TCPA members include Intel, Microsoft, HP, and IBM.

The current trusted-computing design coming from the TCPA includes both hardware and software components acting in concert. The hardware part of TCPA currently consists of a smart chip, which is attached to the computer motherboard. Current plans for second-generation TCPA hardware are for the initial smart chip to eventually be integrated in the CPU of your computer.

In present form, when you start up your PC, the TCPA chip verifies the hardware on your machine against a table of approved hardware (e.g., video card, CD-ROM drive). It then inspects all the software you have loaded on the machine and verifies that it is on the approved list. All approved software must be signed and must have an approved serial number.

If you change the hardware or software configuration on your machine, it will then need to be validated again by the trusted authority (i.e., the hardware or software company). Once the hardware chip has approved your configuration, it hands control of your machine over to a software module. The current TCPA implementation of the software component to support trusted computing is Microsoft's Palladium.

Palladium has a secure kernel (known as the Nexus) that rides in physical memory separate from Windows. It works in concert with Notarized Computing Agents (NCAs)--also known as applications--and the hardware-based smart chip to provide access only to applications, data, and content that you are authorized to see.

As it is currently designed, TCPA and Palladium do nothing to prevent or reduce security risks, such as denial-of-service attacks. If you use a TCPA/Palladium-enabled machine, you are just as apt to receive a virus or spam via Microsoft's Outlook as you are without it. The TCPA initiative does nothing to secure personal computing other than controlling what you do with your machine.

By now, you might be thinking that if you want to retain control over your computer(s) that you will merely skip purchasing systems that are TCPA/Palladium-enabled. You may have little choice in the matter.

Sen. Fritz Hollings of South Carolina has introduced a bill called the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act (CBDTPA) in Congress. If the CBDTPA becomes law in present form, it will mandate that all consumer electronics sold in the United States be required to contain TCPA functionality.

While the CBDTPA is pending, hardware and software that is TCPA-enabled has already begun arriving in the marketplace. Some parts of Microsoft's Windows XP and Xbox are already TCPA-enabled while IBM ThinkPad laptops purchased after May of 2002 contain smart chips. Moreover, Intel plans to include TCPA smart-chip technology in the generation of chips it will ship following the Pentium 4, which the company expects to do by the latter half of 2003.

Abusive computing?

As it is currently designed, TCPA leaves a lot of room for potential abuse on a number of fronts. William Arbaugh, one of TCPA's inventors, has even had second thoughts about the potential misuse of TCPA-enabled systems.

The first likely application that comes to mind as a primary candidate for TCPA-enabled systems is Digital Rights Management (DRM)-enabled software (e.g. audio and video players). Microsoft has already issued an update to its Media Player that requires users to agree to forthcoming antipiracy measures, including remote deletion of unauthorized files from the users' hard disk.

TCPA-enabled applications will securely contact their owners to determine what you can and cannot do with their applications. In addition, vendors, at their discretion, will update the rules that govern how you will use their TCPA-enabled application.

For example, suppose you purchased a movie player from an approved TCPA-software company. The player would install properly since the provider would have a record of your purchasing it. But, then, the software provider, via rules that the player would securely and remotely access, would control what movies you could watch, for how long, and on what devices.