Patent ID: 8055912

Claim:
A computer program product on a computer readable medium for using trusted platform modules within a data processing system, wherein a trusted platform in the data processing system comprises at least one non-volatile memory, the computer program product comprising: means for reading secret data stored within the trusted platform in the data processing system using a hypervisor executing on the data processing system; means for requesting a trusted platform module in the data processing system to encrypt a copy of the secret data to generate an encrypted secret data value; means for storing the previously generated encrypted secret data value within the non-volatile memory within the trusted platform; means for repeatedly generating encrypted secret data values for each other trusted platform module within the data processing system and storing the generated encrypted secret data values so that the non-volatile memory contains multiple encrypted secret data values, each of which is associated with the trusted platform module that generated the respective encrypted secret data value; means for retrieving the encrypted secret data value from the non-volatile memory; means for requesting decryption of the retrieved encrypted secret data value from the trusted platform module that generated the retrieved encrypted secret data value in order to generate a decrypted secret data value; means for repeatedly generating decrypted secret data values for each other trusted platform module within the data processing system; means for comparing the decrypted secret data values; and means for identifying zero or more defective trusted platform modules based on the comparison of the decrypted secret data values.