Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Rob Spiger

Alastair Wolman

Stefan Thom

Stefan Saroiu

Himanshu Raj

David John Linsley

David Michael Robinson

Magnus Nystrom

Jeremiah J Cox

A 'Firmware-Based TPM' or 'fTPM' ensures that secure code execution is isolated to prevent a wide variety of potential security breaches. Unlike a conventional hardware based Trusted Platform Module (TPM), isolation is achieved without the use of dedicated security processor hardware or silicon. In general, the fTPM is first instantiated in a pre-OS boot environment by reading the fTPM from system firmware or firmware accessible memory or storage and placed into read-only protected memory of the device. Once instantiated, the fTPM enables execution isolation for ensuring secure code execution. More specifically, the fTPM is placed into protected read-only memory to enable the device to use hardware such as the ARM&#xae; architecture's TrustZone&#x2122; extensions and security primitives (or similar processor architectures), and thus the devices based on such architectures, to provide secure execution isolation within a &#x201c;firmware-based TPM&#x201d; without requiring hardware modifications to existing devices.

Trustzone-based integrity measurements and verification using a software-based trusted platform module

Software-based trusted platform module

Firmware-based trusted platform module for arm processor architectures and trustzone security extensions

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Rob Spiger