Trusted Computing

J.UCS Special Issue

While Trusted Computing is a technology that has been deployed on hundreds of millions of machines, it is still used only on comparatively few of them. Trusted Computing technology is still an important basis for providing security for our information society. One way to increase the usage is to have enough people out there that understand what Trusted Computing is - and what it isn't, where it can help and how to use it properly. The European Trusted Infrastructure Summer School (ETISS) has been founded by industry and academia as a way to educate Master- and PhD-students in the area of Trusted Computing by providing free and excellent lectures in a pleasant environment with the help of people that have been involved in designing this technology or are top researchers in this field. Mainly funded by industry, ETISS has been held in Oxford (2006, 2008), Bochum (2007), and Graz (2009) and will take place in London this year. Typically, more than sixty participants (students, administration and industry) take the opportunity to learn the basics and the newest stuff from more than ten top notch teachers.

But ETISS is not only about learning - ETISS has formed into a meeting place for young researchers who not only learn, but are also willing to share and discuss their newest ideas. For ETISS 2009, the steering committee decided to open a call for papers, aimed at (but not restricted to) PhD-students to present their results. The five papers in this J.UCS special issue are the result of this call. With topics from virtual trusted platforms or runtime integrity measurement over static analysis of code to anonymous attestation, the papers show the diversity of ongoing research, even in a field as narrow as Trusted Computing. We hope that the special issue will also help increasing visibility of and interest in this field.