The protection for private keys in distributed computing system enabled by trusted computing platform

Trusted computing technology, as a quickly developing technology in recent years, is helpful to improve the computer security and build a trusted computing environment for not only PC system but also distributed computing system. The core of trusted computing technology is cryptology. The trusted computing hardware provided a trusted root for upper layer applications and a trusted software interface is used to communicate with the trusted hardware. In this paper we analyze the key and credential mechanism which is two basic aspects in the cryptology application of trusted computing. The protection for private keys is based on the trusted computing platform with the trusted platform module. We give an example application to illustrate that the TPM enabled protection for key and credential can improve the security of distributed computer system.