trusted computing platform alliance (TCPA)

The Trusted Computing Platform Alliance (TCPA) is an industry alliance that enhances personalcomputer(PC) security and embeds digital rights management( DRM) in hardware. TCPA, like Microsoft's NGSCB (Next Generation Secure Computing Base), is designed to detect hardware tampering with PC hardware, such as the use of unlicensed software and working with protected documents.

TCPA starts at the system core and is implemented by a coprocessor on the motherboard. According to the procedure, the system configurations are documented in the Trusted Platform Module( TPM) by the Trusted Computing Group( TCG) and stored in special registers as hash values. The hash values can be used to encrypt and sign data and thus protect it from unauthorized access. In addition, the Trusted Platform Module also stores the user's encryption keys and generates random numbers.

During startup, the user receives his or her own key for identification. At startup, the coprocessor tests the BIOSconfiguration and saves all steps in a checksum. After that, the TCPA chip starts the operating system. If changes are made to the Basic Input/Output System ( BIOS) or if other keys are used, a different checksum is created, which causes the TCPA chip to display the change.