Patent ID: 7571312

Claim:
A method comprising: launching a virtual manufacturer authority in a protected portion of a processing system; creating a key for the virtual manufacturer authority, wherein the key is protected by a trusted platform module (TPM) of the processing system, and the key is bound to a current state of the virtual manufacturer authority; creating a virtual security coprocessor in the processing system; transmitting a delegation request from the processing system to an external certificate authority (CA) for delegation of TPM manufacturer status and platform manufacturer status to the virtual manufacturer authority via a certificate regarding the delegation, the certificate provided from the external CA to other CAs via a network, the delegation revocable by the external CA, wherein revocation of the delegation is communicated to the other CAs; and after transmitting the delegation request and generation of the certificate, using the key to attest to trustworthiness of the virtual security coprocessor by generation of an endorsement credential and a platform credential by the virtual manufacturer authority using information about the virtual security coprocessor, and signing the endorsement credential and the platform credential using the key for the virtual manufacturer authority, and appending the signature to the endorsement credential and the platform credential to create a finished certificate, without obtaining credentials from an external processing system.