Most of our Nation?s systems have as components operating systems that are replete with vulnerabilities despite the best efforts of the designers to discover and fix the vulnerabilities. Building on the accomplishments of the research community, industry is attempting to create new hardware structures that can help improve security. Particularly noteworthy of these is the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) chip developed by the Trusted Computing Group (TCG), a large industry consortium that involves over 100 members. Now, many delivered processors contain TPM chips, with the goal being to provide a place to store keys, protect storage, provide code isolation attestation about the code running on a system ? all functions that can improve security.
Although the hardware provides extremely useful and powerful security properties, researchers have been slow at adopting these techniques towards the design of secure systems. One reason is that users are not familiar with this new technology.
To remedy this situation, the PIs ran a one-week workshop in which the developers of the TPM technology and users who have made effective use of it provided tutorial material and hands-on experiences for the workshop?s participants which included students, faculty, and potential industry users.
The ultimate goal of the workshop was to define a research program for the next decade focused around hardware support for security.
The funds requested would be used to reimburse the expenses of graduate and undergraduate students participating in the workshop, which took place June 8-12, 2009 in Pittsburgh.
