Abstract Model of a Trusted Platform

Abstract

A trusted platform is a central component in most trusted computing based architectures. It can be constructed in many different ways and with different configuration settings resulting in different trust-related properties, such as the platform will not expose a secret or delegate a task to a rogue entity. In order to reason about such properties, we propose an abstract model based on CSP in which a platform is treated as a potentially malicious composition of sub-systems that interact by communicating messages. The model enables instantiation of platforms with varying trust levels and verification against specified properties. The applicability of the model is demonstrated on a trusted grid platform.