Patent ID: 9258331
Filing Date: 2016-02-09
CPC Classification: G06F,H04L

Claim Text:
1. A trust control management method for security of communications among a plurality of computer machines identified to be in a trusted computing group on a computer network, comprising: generating, at a target computer machine of said plurality of computer machines during a target computer machine validation procedure to be identified as being in the trusted computing group, a unique encoded alphanumeric value (Trust ID value) by combining remotely at a remote attestation service computer machine for the trusted computing group a set of alphanumeric values defined by a user of the target computer machine to be associated with the target computer machine, including hardware-specific seed values which are uniquely and unchangeably associated with specific physical hardware embodied with the target computer machine, using an encoding algorithm; storing the remotely generated Trust ID value associated with the hardware for the target computer machine in the target computer machine; maintaining in the remote attestation service computer machine a list of the user-defined alphanumeric values associated with the target computer machine together with a list of types of hardware-specific seed values associated with specific physical hardware embodied with the target computer machine that are to be retrieved from the target computer machine and remotely combined with the other user-defined values using the encoding algorithm during a subsequent attestation procedure to determine whether the target computer machine is the same as the target computer machine identified during the validation procedure as being in the trusted computing group; and performing, at the attestation service computer machine remotely and independently from the target computer machine, an attestation procedure via a trust control application for computing a Trust ID value by combining the remotely-stored user-defined alphanumeric values with the selected physical hardware-specific seed values retrieved from the target computer machine and using the same trust encoding algorithm that was used to encode the original Trust ID value stored in the target computer machine; comparing the Trust ID value obtained in the attestation procedure with the original Trust ID value stored in the target computer machine, and upon a match, determining that the target computer machine is a trusted computer machine in the trusted computing group, or upon a failure to match, determining that the target computer machine is not a trusted computer machine in the trusted computing group, then taking an appropriate security action by the trust control application.