Trusted Computing Methods and Security

Prerequisites

• System security, applied cryptography, and architecture fundamentals.
• Understanding of keys, certificates, and boot chains.
• Ability to read systems research papers.

Learning Outcomes

• Explain roots of trust, measured boot, and remote attestation.
• Evaluate TPM, TEE, and virtualization trust boundaries.
• Design key sealing, policy binding, and attestation-verification flows.
• Analyze side-channel and rollback risks in trusted execution.
• Build a small trusted-computing prototype or audit report.

Course Format

• Two meetings per week: one for core concepts and one for labs, paper discussion, or project review.
• The course proceeds over 16 weeks, each with a checkable assignment, lab, or project milestone.
• Reproducibility is required: code, configuration, data, lab logs, and reports must be reviewable by staff or peers.

Weekly Plan

Assessment

Course Project

Projects may implement remote attestation, TPM key sealing, TEE application audit, or supply-chain provenance policy.

Policies

• AI tools are allowed, but generated code, lab notes, and design suggestions must be reviewed by the student and disclosed in the report.
• Students may not submit code, proofs, configuration, or experimental results they cannot explain; each member must defend their own design, tests, and tradeoffs.
• Late work affects iteration grades, but the course values reproducible, auditable, and maintainable results over last-minute accumulation.