Abstract: Under a system referred to as GAA in the 3G protocol, authentication of devices in a network that is usually performed by a home subscriber server can be transferred to a third party element known as a bootstrapping server function. However, the use of a bootstrapping server function does not completely address the problem of reducing authentication traffic at the home subscriber sever. The present invention alleviates such a problem by utilising the original session key generated under GAA and using that key in a recursive process to authenticate and generate further session keys at other network elements. This generation of further keys can be performed independently of the home subscriber server, and thus reduces traffic at the home subscriber server.

Abstract: A system and method is provided that establishes and maintains conditional trust by stating a signal of distrust from a trustee's computing platform to a trustor's computing platform. The trustor attests a trustee at a given time and also sends trust conditions to the trustee upon which the trustor trusts the trustee for some intended purpose. The trust conditions may include restrictions on hardware or software components and any status changes to the hardware or software components. The trustee then monitors the hardware and software components in relation to the trust conditions and reports distrust signals when the trustee's hardware and software configuration no longer matches the trust conditions.