1.1 Glossary

This document uses the following terms:

attestation: A process of establishing some property of a computer platform or of a trusted platform module (TPM) key, in part through TPM cryptographic operations.

attestation certificate (AIKCert): An X.509 certificate, issued by a Privacy-CA ([TCG-Cred] section 2.6), that contains the public portion of an Attestation Identity Key signed by a Privacy-CA. It states that the public key is associated with a valid TPM. See [TCG-Cred] section 3.4 for more information.

Attestation Identity Key (AIK): An asymmetric (public/private) key pair that can substitute for the Endorsement Key (EK) as an identity for the trusted platform module (TPM). The private portion of an AIK can never be revealed or used outside the TPM and can only be used inside the TPM for a limited set of operations. Furthermore, it can only be used for signing, and only for limited, TPM-defined operations.

binary large object (BLOB): A discrete packet of data that is stored in a database and is treated as a sequence of uninterpreted bytes.

endorsement certificate (EKCert): An X.509 certificate issued by a platform manufacturer indicating that the trusted platform module (TPM) with the specified endorsement key was built into a specified computer platform. See [TCG-Cred] section 3.2 for more information.

endorsement key (EK): A Rivest-Shamir-Adleman (RSA) public and private key pair, which is created randomly on the trusted platform module (TPM) at manufacture time and cannot be changed. The private key never leaves the TPM, while the public key is used for attestation and for encryption of sensitive data sent to the TPM. See [TCG-Cred] section 2.4 for more information.

Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP): An application-level protocol for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems (text, graphic images, sound, video, and other multimedia files) on the World Wide Web.

Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS): An extension of HTTP that securely encrypts and decrypts web page requests. In some older protocols, "Hypertext Transfer Protocol over Secure Sockets Layer" is still used (Secure Sockets Layer has been deprecated). For more information, see [SSL3] and [RFC5246].

Secure Sockets Layer (SSL): A security protocol that supports confidentiality and integrity of messages in client and server applications that communicate over open networks. SSL supports server and, optionally, client authentication using X.509 certificates [X509] and [RFC5280]. SSL is superseded by Transport Layer Security (TLS). TLS version 1.0 is based on SSL version 3.0 [SSL3].

simple type: An element that can contain only text and appears as <simpleType> in an XML document or any attribute of an element. Attributes are considered simple types because they contain only text. See also complex type.

TCP/IP: A set of networking protocols that is widely used on the Internet and provides communications across interconnected networks of computers with diverse hardware architectures and various operating systems. It includes standards for how computers communicate and conventions for connecting networks and routing traffic.

Transport Layer Security (TLS): A security protocol that supports confidentiality and integrity of messages in client and server applications communicating over open networks. TLS supports server and, optionally, client authentication by using X.509 certificates (as specified in [X509]). TLS is standardized in the IETF TLS working group.

trusted platform module (TPM): A component of a trusted computing platform. The TPM stores keys, passwords, and digital certificates. See [TCG-Architect] for more information.

XML namespace: A collection of names that is used to identify elements, types, and attributes in XML documents identified in a URI reference [RFC3986]. A combination of XML namespace and local name allows XML documents to use elements, types, and attributes that have the same names but come from different sources. For more information, see [XMLNS-2ED].

XML namespace prefix: An abbreviated form of an XML namespace, as described in [XML].

XML schema: A description of a type of XML document that is typically expressed in terms of constraints on the structure and content of documents of that type, in addition to the basic syntax constraints that are imposed by XML itself. An XML schema provides a view of a document type at a relatively high level of abstraction.

MAY, SHOULD, MUST, SHOULD NOT, MUST NOT: These terms (in all caps) are used as defined in [RFC2119]. All statements of optional behavior use either MAY, SHOULD, or SHOULD NOT.