BIB-VERSION:: CS-TR-v2.0
ID:: ncstrl.dartmouthcs//TR2007-597
ENTRY:: July 06, 2007
ORGANIZATION:: Dartmouth College, Computer Science
TITLE:: A Security Assessment of Trusted Platform Modules
TYPE:: Technical Report (paper)
REVISION:: 3
AUTHOR:: Sparks, Evan R.
DATE:: June 2007
RETRIEVAL:: For a paper copy, email <reports@cs.dartmouth.edu>
RETRIEVAL:: For a paper copy, write to
       Technical Report Librarian
       Department of Computer Science
       Dartmouth College
       6211 Sudikoff Laboratory
       Hanover, NH 03755-3510
       USA
RETRIEVAL:: Compressed Postscript at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/reports/TR2007-597.ps.Z
RETRIEVAL:: PDF at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/reports/TR2007-597.pdf
ABSTRACT:: Trusted Platform Modules (TPMs) are becoming ubiquitous devices included
in newly released personal computers. Broadly speaking, the aim
of this technology is to provide a facility for authenticating the platform on
which they are running: they are able to measure attest to the authenticity
of a hardware and software configuration. Designed to be cheap, commodity
devices which motherboard and processor vendors can include in
their products with minimal marginal cost, these devices have a good theoretical
design. Unfortunately, there exist several practical constraints on
the effectiveness of TPMs and the architectures which employ them which
leave them open to attack. We demonstrate some hardware and software attacks
against these devices and architectures. These attacks include Time of
Check/Time of Use attacks on the Integrity Measurment Architecture, and a
bus attack against the Low Pin Count bus. Further, we explore the possibility
of side-channel attacks against TPMs.
NOTE::
Senior Honors Thesis.
Advisor: Sean Smith.
END:: ncstrl.dartmouthcs//TR2007-597