US Trade Commission criticises China’s Trusted Computing Module
Posted by Ken Y-N on January 4th, 2011 at 05:44pm
ComputerWorld (the Norwegian edition, for some reason!) published a summary of a report by the US International Trade Commission into intellectual property in China. Of interest to the blog is the US government’s view on the Trusted Computing Module, China’s home-grown Trusted Platform Module.
One issue is China’s strategy of developing closed, national standards for trusted computing through Trusted Cryptography Modules (TCM) rather than through participation in the ISO and Trusted Computing Group. The Chinese TCM requires that cryptographic algorithms and protocols used to perform specific security tasks, such as verifying that only authorized codes run on a system, be based on Chinese technology. U.S. industry representatives have raised concerns that Chinese development of TCM technology is motivated by the desire to reduce royalties for patents embedded in TCG technology standards and that it will negatively affect interoperability and globally integrated supply chains.
As the usual disclaimer, I will point out that the TCG’s TPM does not perform nor specify how to "verify[…] that only authorized codes run on a system", although I could easily believe that the Chinese TCM does.
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