Software Based Remote Attestation for OS Kernel and User Applications

This paper describes a software based remote attestation scheme for providing a root of trust on an untrusted computing platform. To provide a root of trust, this work focuses on obtaining the integrity of the OS running on the platform, and then leverages the techniques to obtain the integrity of a user application. A trusted external entity issues a challenge to the client platform. The challenge is executable code which the client must execute, and the code generates results which are sent to the external entity. These results provide the external entity an assurance as to whether the client application and the OS at the client end are in pristine condition. This work also presents a technique where it can be verified that the application which was attested, did not get replaced by a different application once the challenge got completed.