Wave Systems Corp. (fka WAVXQ)

[Chance To See]

Thanks cslewis.

When I first listened to it, I thought he was saying that anyone who uses virtualization needs a TPM. I listened to it again and realized he was saying that anyone who uses a computer needs a TPM (I think). Hope we’ll see some dynamite marketing materials based on this clear presentation.

Re the ** in the last paragraph. I'm not clear whether the needed software he mentions is something that Wave does or whether Wave's software merely manages the TPM.



Virtualization is a powerful new technology. It can be used in the data center to give us greater flexibility and greater scaling with the systems that we already have. It can be used for clients to allow clients to access virtual machines in the cloud or hosted in the data center, to run multiple operating systems and applications and environments, for remote desktop. There is a lot of things you can do with virtualization.

But one thing we should keep in mind is that virtualization is actually a double-edged sword because it can be used by the bad guys against us. And then you end up in a matrix-type phenomenon, a world where you really don’t know what’s real and what’s not. You think that you’re running your operating system and your applications on the hardware. But maybe the bad guys have introduced a virtualization layer in there and they’re actually capturing your passwords, all of your confidential information. Maybe they’re shipping that off to some other nation, maybe they’re even changing the results of your computations. It’s a very dangerous world when you consider that virtualization can be used in that fashion.

And how can we detect that and prevent that? Unfortunately we can’t do it with software alone because software can always be fooled. Software doesn’t know whether it’s running in a virtual machine or on the physical hardware. That’s the great things about virtualization, it works with the software that you already have.

Unfortunately it’s not such a great thing when you’re trying to detect or prevent virtualization from some attacker. In that case what you need is security hardware. Client side or server side security hardware like the Trusted Platform Module. Now the good news is we all have those Trusted Platform Modules already. They have been included in our laptops for the last few years and they allow us to detect when the software is running actually on the hardware and when there’s a virtualization layer in between. The Trusted Platform Module is certified at the factory so that the software can detect when it’s talking directly to that Trusted Platform Module or whether it’s going through a virtualization layer.

Now the bad news about Trusted Platform Module is that it comes “off” by default. When you get your laptops or your servers from the factory, even if they have a TPM it comes “off” by default and you need to go and turn it on. And you need to have software that can take advantage of it in order to detect whether there is an extra virtualization layer that has been inserted **. So I would encourage you as you think about virtualization to think about good virtualization and bad virtualization and to make sure that you have the capability using Trusted Platform Module to detect that bad virtualization so that you don’t end up in that house of mirrors. It’s not a place you want to be.