Towards a Virtual Trusted Platform

The advances and adoption of trusted computing and hardware assisted virtualisation technologies in standard pc platforms promise new approaches in build- ing a robust virtualisation platform for security sensitive software modules. the amal- gam of these technologies allows an attractive off-the-shelf environment, capable of supporting security levels potentially higher than commonly deployed today. this ar- ticle proposes a practical approach of combining technology elements available today to create such a platform using available components. the design supports operating high-security and low-security compartments side by side. the high security compart- ment is able to use the functionality of the trusted platform module. the low security compartment is isolated through hardware-assisted virtualisation. the platform boots via intel trusted execution technology to resist manipulation. we discuss the building blocks of the architecture and present a number of open research challenges.