Peer-to-peer access control architecture using trusted computing technology

It has been recognized for some time that software alone does not provide an adequate foundation for building a high-assurance trusted platform. The emergence of industry-standard trusted computing technologies promises a revolution in this respect by providing roots of trust upon which secure applications can be developed. These technologies offer a particularly attractive platform for security in peer-to-peer environments. In this paper we propose a trusted computing architecture to enforce access control policies in such applications. Our architecture is based on an abstract layer of trusted hardware which can be constructed with emerging trusted computing technologies. A trusted reference monitor (TRM) is introduced beyond the trusted hardware. By monitoring and verifying the integrity and properties of running applications in a platform using the functions of trusted computing, the TRM can enforce various policies on behalf of object owners. We further extend this platform-based architecture to support user-based control policies, cooperating with existing services for user identity and attributes. This architecture and its refinements can be extended in future work to support general access control models such as lattice-based access control, role-based access control, and usage control.