Re: TCPA not virtualizable during ownership change (Re: Overcoming the potential downside of TCPA)
This is going to be a very long, and very boring message. But it should highlight why we have differing opinions about so very many capabilities of the TCPA system. For the sake of attempting to avoid supplying too little information, I have simply searched for the term and will make comments on each location that it appears. - Original Message - From: Adam Back [EMAIL PROTECTED] Phew... the document is certainly tortuous, and has a large number of similarly and confusingly named credentials, certificates and keys, however from what I can tell this is what is going on: I wholeheartedly agree. 332 pages to say 5 pages worth of real information is not helpful. Summary: I think the endorsement key and it's hardware manufacturers certificate is generated at manufacture and is not allowed to be changed. [Search criteria endorsement] While I haven't found any solid evidence either way, they seem to almost deliberately avoid that discussion on Page 22 I found a fatal errorcode TCPA_NO_ENDORSEMENT at TCPA_BASE+35 The TPM does not a EK installed attempting to interpret the bad grammar, I believe this should state The TPM does not [have] an [Endorsement Key] installed which seems to indicate that the platform may ship without one. On page 35 the endorsement key is listed as persistent data. Which at first would indicate that the endorsement key happens before shipping, but since there is also an RNG state variable stored persistently, my confidence in this is undermined. Adding to the complications, down near the end of the page, in the table it says This is the TPM's endorsement key pair. See 9.2. The default value is manufacturer-specific which indicates that it does ship with an endorsement key, but that the key can be changed by the owner. Page 38, the existance of the CBKPUsed flag hints that the endorsement key pair need not always be present. Unfortunately the spec goes on to say NOTE: This flag has no default value as the key pair MUST be created by one or the other mechanism. Which certainly confuses things. Page 41 TPM_CreateEndorsementKey may be called before TPM_Startup. This is necessary because TPM_Startup will fail unless an endorsement key exists is of no help either way. As with all the others, it states that there may exist conditions where the EK may not exist, but does not give any hints whether this is before or after the TPM leaves the plant. On page 79, the EK is metioned twice. The first time if useless for our purpose. The second time states This SHALL be the TPM endorsement credential which indicates that an endorsement credential must exist. Other locations though seem to hint that a void endorsement credential may be possible. Starting on Page 84 is section 4.32.1, which seems to be as close to an authority on the EK as possible, but lacks a statement of whether the EK is shipped with or added later. It does however clearly indicate that the creation of the EK occurs before the Privacy CA is contacted, which was already agreed on. [somewhere around here I stopped addressing everyt occurance of the word endorsement because most of them are frivolous] Page 135, Section 5.11.1, clearly states The new owner MUST encrypt the Owner authorization data and the SRK authorization data using the PUBEK. Which clearly indicates that the EK must exist before ownership can be taken. Other places have hinted that ownership may be taken and then the EK updated, which completely contradicts the one-timeness, or this statement. Page 135 If no EK is present the TPM MUST return TCPA_NO_ENDORSEMENT which indicates that one can at least attempt to take ownership before an EK is present, which would contradict the requirement that the EK come from the factory. Page 178, Section 7.3 I am only mentioning because it presents a rather interesting possibility. It hints that under some circumstances it may be acceptable for a manufacturer to copy the data from one TCPA to another. This portion begins with The manufacturer takes the maintainance blob . . . This may however only be to update an existing one to address flaws or meet new capabilities. Page 183, hints that even the manufacturer is not allowed to known EK public key, which complicates things no end, because the Privacy CA certainly cannot at that point be permitted to view it. This would indicate that even if the EK is shipped with the system, it can never leave the system. This would limit the ability of the EK to simply certifying the owner, if that is true then it confuses me even further. Page 213 section 8.10 clearly states that if the owner clears the TCPA, everthing is cleared except the endorsement key pair. Which would indicate that this is truly a one-shot deal. Page 240, states This is a dead TPM. It has failed it's startup smoke test. It should not leave the factory floor. This indicates that the EK must be created before the TPM leaves the factory. Section 9.2, page 261, states that TPM_CreateEndorsementKeyPair
TCPA not virtualizable during ownership change (Re: Overcoming the potential downside of TCPA)
Phew... the document is certainly tortuous, and has a large number of similarly and confusingly named credentials, certificates and keys, however from what I can tell this is what is going on: Summary: I think the endorsement key and it's hardware manufacturers certificate is generated at manufacture and is not allowed to be changed. Changing ownership only means (typically) deleting old identities and creating new ones. The longer version... - endorsement key generation and certification - There is one endorsement key per TPM which is created and certified during manufacture. The creation and certification process is 1) create endorsement key pair, 2) export public key endorsement key, 3) hardware manufacturer signs endorsement public key to create an endorsement certificate (to certify that that endorsement public key belongs to this TPM), 4) the certificate is stored in the TPM (for later use in communications with the privacy CA.) - ownership - Then there is the concept of ownership. The spec says the TPM MUST ship with no Owner installed. The owner when he wishes to claim ownership choose a authentication token which is sent into the TPM encrypted with the endorsement key. (They give the example of the authentication token being the hash of a password). Physical presence tests apply to claiming ownership (eg think BIOS POST with no networking enabled, or physical pin on motherboard like BIOS flash enable). The authentication token and ownership can be changed. The TPM can be reset back to a state with no current owner. BUT _at no point_ does the TPM endorsement private key leave the TPM. The TPM_CreateEndorsementKeyPair function is allowed to be called once (during manufacture) and is thereafter disabled. - identity keys - Then there is the concept of identity keys. The current owner can create and delete identities, which can be anonymous or pseudonymous. Presumably the owner would delete all identity keys before giving the TPM to a new owner. The identity public key is certified by the privacy CA. - privacy ca - The privacy CA accepts identity key certification requests which contain a) identity public key b) a proof of possession (PoP) of identity private key (signature on challenge), c) the hardware manufacturers endorsement certificate containing the TPM's endorsement public key. The privacy CA checks whether the endorsement certificate is signed by a hardware manufacturer it trusts. The privacy CA sends in response an identity certificate encrypted with the TPM's endorsement public key. The TPM decrypts the encrypted identity certifate with the endorsement private key. - remote attestation - The owner uses the identity keys in the remote attestation functions. Note that the identity private keys are also generated on the TPM, the private key also never leaves the TPM. The identity private key is certified by the privacy CA as having been requested by a certified endorsement key. The last two paragraphs imply something else interesting: the privacy CA can collude with anyone to create a virtualized environment. (This is because the TPM endorsement key is never directly used in remote attestation for privacy reasons.) All that is required to virtualize a TPM is an attestation from the privacy CA in creating an identity certificate. So there are in fact three avenues for FBI et al to go about obtaining covert access to the closed space formed by TCPA applications: (A) get one of the hardware manufacturers to sign an endorsement key generated outside a TPM (or get the endorsement CA's private key), or (B) get a widely used and accepted privacy CA to overlook it's policy of demanding a hardware manufacturer CA endorsed endorsement public key and sign an identity public key created outside of a TPM (or get the privacy CA's private key). (C) create their own privacy CA and persuade an internet server they wish to investigate the users of to accept it. Create themselves a virtualized client using their own privacy CA, look inside. I think to combat problem C) as a user of a service you'd want the remote attestation of software state to auditably include it's accepted privacy CA database to see if there are any strange Privacy CAs on there. I think you could set up and use your own privacy CA, but you can be sure the RIAA/MPAA will never trust your CA. A bit like self-signing SSL site keys. If you and your friends add your CA to their trusted root CA database it'll work. In this case however people have to trust your home-brew privacy CA not to issue identity certificates without having seen a valid hardware-endorsement key if they care about preventing virtualization for the privacy or security of some network application. Also, they seem to take explicit steps to prevent you getting multiple privacy CA certificates on the same identity key. (I'm not sure why.) It seems like a bad thing as it forces you to trust just one CA, it prevents web of trust which
Re: TCPA not virtualizable during ownership change (Re: Overcoming the potential downside of TCPA)
I think a number of the apparent conflicts go away if you carefully track endorsement key pair vs endorsement certificate (signature on endorsement key by hw manufacturer). For example where it is said that the endorsement _certificate_ could be inserted after ownership has been established (not the endorsement key), so that apparent conflict goes away. (I originally thought this particular one was a conflict also, until I noticed that.) I see anonymous found the same thing. But anyway this extract from the CC PP makes clear the intention and an ST based on this PP is what a given TPM will be evaluated based on: http://niap.nist.gov/cc-scheme/PPentries/CCEVS-020016-PP-TPM1_9_4.pdf p 20: | The TSF shall restrict the ability to initialize or modify the TSF | data: Endorsement Key Pair [...] to the TPM manufacturer or designee. (if only they could have managed to say that in the spec). Adam -- http://www.cypherspace.org/adam/ - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]