MIT Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science

DATE: WEDNESDAY, APRIL 26, 1995

TIME: TALK AT 11:00
Refreshments at 10:45

PLACE: NE43-518

Using Secure Coprocessors

Bennet Yee
Carnegie Mellon University

ABSTRACT

While cryptographic techniques provide communication security in distributed systems, they alone are not sufficient for building real, secure distributed applications. Traditional assumptions about trusted computing bases are just unrealistic when we move from the world of mainframes to the world of desk-top workstations, PC clusters, and mobile computing.

In this talk, I will show that by adding a small, physically secure hardware module to existing PCs or workstations, we can build secure distributed applications that were not possible before. I will give several sample distributed applications which can not be implemented securely within existing frameworks, describe my design and implementation of a software/hardware architecture for solving distributed security problems, and show how this design addresses the problems raised by the example security applications.

HOST: Prof. Nancy Lynch