TNC and Free Software

Posted by Ken Y-N on May 14th, 2008 at 01:43pm

As I have been talking a lot about the coverage of the Trusted Computing Group’s (TCG) Trusted Network Connect (TNC) workgroup, and about the open source reaction to anything TCG-related, I thought it would be interesting to list some of the open source initiatives underway to support the TNC protocols.

To support these projects, the TCG offers liaison memberships and open source licensing of the header files for the TNC protocols.

FHH@TNC

Or is it TNC@FHH? The site from the University of Applied Arts and Sciences in Hannover, Germany (FHH) has the abbreviation both ways round! This site provides both a TNC client and a NAA-TNCS server.

Visit it here.

libtnc

The project documentation says:

OS Implementation of the Trusted Network Connect (TNC) specification from Trusted Computing Group (TCG). Provides functions for loading and communicating with TNC plugins, sample IMC and IMV plugins, TNCCS-XML support on Windows, Linux, Mac, *BSD etc.

Visit it here.

OpenSEA 802.1X supplicant

According to the web site, an 802.1X supplicant is:

An 802.1X supplicant acts as the client side of a client/server authentication handshake. When an 802.1X supplicant tries to access a network, it is challenged for authentication credentials by an 802.1X authenticator (typically an Ethernet switch or Wireless Access Point). The supplicant and authenticator then exchange authentication credentials over a particular type of EAP (i.e. PEAP, EAP-TLS, EAP-TTLS). When the supplicant provides authentication credentials, the authenticator forward them on to an authentication server via the RADIUS protocol for verification. If the authentication credentials are valid, the authentication server sends an “accepted” message to the authenticator which then grants network access to the supplicant.

This is an important part of the client for a TNC-compliant device, I think.

Visit it here.

FreeRADIUS

RADIUS, or Remote Authentication Dial In User Service, is a protocol for central management of network access for large organisations. This is the underlying server on which TNC server services can be built.

Visit it here.

Tags: open source

Under TNC Tags: open source