Integrity Based Access Control: a Case Study in Remote Attestation

Security issues in a networked environment include threats to either end-point and the conduit between them. Issues related to enterprise servers and communication channels have been studied at length in subjects such as cryptography and system security. Client ends in any networked scenario have received little attentions in security studies. Hence, clients have become the target of malicious activities on the larger networks such as the Internet. Trusted Computing aims to address client side security concerns using hardware-based security. Remote attestation is an essential characteristic of Trusted Computing, which allows a client system to provide assurance to a remote platform that its platform is in a trustworthy state. However, remote attestation, being a state-of-the-art technology, is difficult to realize. In this book, we present a practical case study in the form of a trusted web browser and a trust-aware web server. We provide hands-on information about setting up the client and server environments, and modifications to an open source web server and browser with the aim of letting the average developer gain expertise in using remote attestation in a practical scenario.