Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Shon Eizenhoefer

Stefan Thom

Erik Lee Holt

Kevin M Litwack

Yash Gandhi

Ping Xie

James Anthony Schwartz, Jr

Ellsworth Davis Walker

Arvind R Padole

Itai Rosenberger

Troy Alan Funk

Sanket Patel

Yash Ashok Kumar Gandhi

Techniques are provided to allow remote initialization of a Trusted Platform Module. The results may be trusted and confidential even if the target device has malicious operating system or other software running.

Trusted and confidential remote TPM initialization

Various embodiments provide an ability to automatically boot a computing device with an operating system stored on a portable storage device when the portable storage device is detected to be present. The computing device can be configured to dynamically boot from the portable storage device when the portable storage device is detected, and revert to a programmed boot order in its associated boot module when the portable storage device is not detected. In some embodiments, the operating system is fully encapsulated on the portable storage device, such as the operating system being completely separate from an operating system initially booting the computing device.

Dynamically redirecting boot to another operating system

A transparent trust validation of an unknown platform can be performed by communicationally coupling it to a trusted device, such as a portable peripheral device carried by a user, or one or more remote computing devices. Information from the unknown platform can be obtained by boot code copied to it from the trusted device and such information can be validated by the trusted device. The trusted device can then provide an encrypted version of decryption key to the boot code which can request the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) of the unknown platform to decrypt and return the decryption key. If the information originally obtained from the unknown platform and validated by the trusted device was authentic, the TPM will be able to provide the decryption key to the boot code, enabling it to decrypt an encrypted volume comprising applications, operating systems or other components.

Transparent trust validation of an unknown platform

Growing community of inventors

Bothell, WA, United States of America

Shon Eizenhoefer