A Trusted Computing Identity Collation Protocol to Simplify Deployment of New Disaster Response Devices

Peter Danner (Graz University of Technology, Austria)

Daniel Hein (Graz University of Technology, Austria)

Abstract: The use of modern computing equipment by emergency service units in a disaster area assures increased efficiency during disaster response. Emergency devices must be easy to use and secure. Trusted Computing is a promising approach to help protect the software integrity of commodity emergency devices and thus increase their security. To efficiently use Trusted Computing in an emergency scenario it is necessary to establish an initial trust relationship between the emergency infrastructure providers and a user, her devices, and the software running on those devices. Currently, this requires physical presence of the involved entities. In this paper we propose a remote protocol that employs electronic identity facilities and Trusted Computing to aggregate the identity of a user, the identity of her devices and a set of trusted software states as well as the users facilities and skills. Such a protocol alleviates the need for physical presence. Thus, the protocol facilitates deployment of new electronic emergency equipment, while maintaining a high level of security. We belief that such a protocol is an important step in the process of introducing new capabilities for disaster response.

Keywords: TPM, disaster response, eID, electronic identity, trusted computing

Categories: D.2.9, D.4.6, H.3.2, H.3.4