Notebooks shipped with TPM signals widespread acceptance of Trusted Computing Standard

24 March 2004 Computer/Embedded Technology Products & Solutions

Atmel has shipped over five million Trusted Platform Module (TPM) ICs in the world's most popular notebook computers. Much of the popularity is due to the computer's hardware-based encryption, which eliminates the need for hardware tokens and reduces administration efforts and the cost of providing security. The secure storage of encryption keys, passwords and digital certificates provided by TPMs permit secure wireless data transfer and a 'single sign-on' password manager.

TPMs are single-chip security sub-systems that protect the end-user's privacy by providing tamper-proof storage and management of the user's identity, passwords, and encryption keys. Computers without TPMs store passwords, digital certificates, and encryption keys on the system hard drive, which is relatively vulnerable to unauthorised access. When installed in PCs, TPMs can help to prevent identity theft crimes, such as e-mail-borne viruses and the scams perpetrated on 'Best Buy' and 'PayPal' customers. Here, Internet scams used 'spoofed' e-mails and hijacked websites that pretended to be Best Buy and PayPal in order to elicit sensitive financial information from victims.

The TPM can ensure the authenticity of the email source and detect if the message (or data) has been fraudulently changed. If all parties had had TPMs, the victims could have known that the bogus e-mails were not really from the source indicated.

The ability of TPMs to record and store measurements of the 'state' of the system at boot-up can be used to thwart hackers by limiting data access to specific stages of the boot process and can help detect viruses or worms that affect the boot up process. TPM security is based on an industry standard developed by the Trusted Computing Group (TCG).

Atmel's AT97SC3201 TPM ICs provide a complete, turnkey, TCG 1.1b-compliant, hardware security solution that integrates a high-performance low-power processor, 500 ms 2048-bit RSA crypto accelerator, true random number generator, secure EEPROM storage for public/private keys, SRAM, timer, realtime clock, LPC interface to Intel and AMD processors, and tamper prevention circuitry that disables the chip if someone tries to read its contents.

For more information contact Arrow Altech Distribution, 011 923 9600, Memec SA, 011 897 8600, or EBV-Electrolink, 021 421 5350.

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