Jerrold Leichter wrote: >All of this is fine as long as there is a one-to-one association between >machines and "owners" of those machines. Consider the example I gave >earlier: A shared machine containing the standard distribution of the >trusted computing software. All the members of the group that maintain the >software will want to have the machine attest, to them, that it is properly >configured and operating as intended.
I think you may be giving up too quickly. It looks to me like this situation can be handled by owner-directed attestation (e.g., Owner Override, or Owner Gets Key). Do you agree? To see why, let's go back to the beginning, and look at the threat model. If multiple people are doing shared development on a central machine, that machine must have an owner -- let's call him Linus. Now ask yourself: Do those developers trust Linus? If the developers don't trust Linus, they're screwed. It doesn't how much attestation you throw at the problem, Linus can always violate their security model. As always, you've got to trust "root" (the system administrator); nothing new here. Consequently, it seems to me we only need to consider a threat model where the developers trust Linus. (Linus need not be infallible, but the developers should believe Linus won't intentionally try to violate their security goals.) In this case, owner-directed attestation suffices. Do you see why? Linus's machine will produce an attestation, signed by Linus's key, of what software is running. Since the developers trust Linus, they can then verify this attestation. Note that the developers don't need to trust each other, but they do need to trust the owner/admin of the shared box. So, it seems to me we can get by without third-party attestation. This scenario sounds pretty typical to me. Most machines have a single owner. Most machines have a system administrator (who must be trusted). I don't think I'm making unrealistic assumptions. >You're trying to make the argument that feature X (here, remote attestation for >multiple mutually-suspicious parties) has no significant uses. Historically, >arguments like this are losers. Yes, this is a fair point. I suppose I would say I'm arguing that feature X (third-party attestation) seems to have few significant uses. It has some uses, but it looks like they are in the minority; for the most part, it seems that feature X is unnecessary. At the same time, many people are worried that feature X comes with significant costs. At least, this is how it looks to me. Maybe I've got something wrong. If these two points are both accurate, this is an interesting observation. If they're inaccurate, I'd be very interested to hear where they fail. --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
