Patent ID: 7822966

Claim:
A system comprising: an integrated circuit coupled with a storage medium via a bus, the integrated circuit to generate a first level trusted computing base (TCB) having a plurality of hardware components including a trusted platform module (TPM); form an extended TCB by adding a second level TCB to the first level TCB, wherein the second level TCB is software-based; transfer properties associated with the first level TCB to the second level TCB; add one or more levels of software-based TCB to the extended TCB; transfer the properties associated with the first level TCB to the one or more levels of software-based TCB via one or more levels of TCB interfaces; store measured values depending on a level of abstraction of the one or more levels of software TCB; and use the one or more levels of software TCB independent of hardware-based or software-based implementation of a level of software TCB below the one or more levels of software TCB.