A trusted path or trusted channel is a mechanism that provides confidence that the user is communicating with what the user intended to communicate with, ensuring that attackers can't intercept or modify whatever information is being communicated. The term was initially introduced by Orange Book. As its security architecture concept, it can be implemented with any technical safeguards suitable for particular environment and risk profile.

Examples

Electronic signature

Common Criteria The Common Criteria for Information Technology Security Evaluation (referred to as Common Criteria or CC) is an international standard ( ISO/ IEC 15408) for computer security certification. It is currently in version 3.1 revision 5. Common Criter ...

and

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been ...

electronic signature An electronic signature, or e-signature, is data that is logically associated with other data and which is used by the signatory to sign the associated data. This type of signature has the same legal standing as a handwritten signature as long as ...

standards ''trusted path'' and ''trusted channel'' describe techniques that prevent interception or tampering with sensitive data as it passes through various system components: * ''trusted path'' — protects data from the user and a security component (e.g. PIN sent to a

smart card A smart card, chip card, or integrated circuit card (ICC or IC card) is a physical electronic authentication device, used to control access to a resource. It is typically a plastic credit card-sized card with an embedded integrated circuit (IC) c ...

to unblock it for

digital signature A digital signature is a mathematical scheme for verifying the authenticity of digital messages or documents. A valid digital signature, where the prerequisites are satisfied, gives a recipient very high confidence that the message was created b ...

), * ''trusted channel'' — protects data between security component and other information resources (e.g. data read from a file and sent to the

for signature).

User login

One of popular techniques for password stealing in Microsoft Windows was login spoofing, which was based on programs that simulated operating system's login prompt. When users try to log in, the fake login program can then capture user passwords for later use. As a safeguard

Windows NT Windows NT is a proprietary graphical operating system produced by Microsoft, the first version of which was released on July 27, 1993. It is a processor-independent, multiprocessing and multi-user operating system. The first version of Wi ...

introduced Ctrl-Alt-Del sequence as secure attention key to escape any third party programs and invoke system login prompt. A similar problem arises in case of websites requiring authentication, where the user is expected to enter their credentials without actually knowing if the website is not spoofed.

HTTPS Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) is an extension of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). It is used for secure communication over a computer network, and is widely used on the Internet. In HTTPS, the communication protocol is e ...

mitigates this attack by first authenticating the server to the user (using trust anchor and certification path validation algorithm), and only then displaying the login form.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Trusted Path Computer network security