European Information Security Award 2004 for Direct Anonymous Attestation (DAA)

November 30, 2004—The winners of the European Information Security Award 2004 were announced at the RSA Conference in Barcelona. In the category Research & Development, the award went to Jan Camenisch and Roger Zimmermann of IBM Research - Zurich, who developed the Direct Anonymous Attestation protocol (DAA) in cooperation with researchers from HP and Intel.

DAA is a security concept for remote authentification of a hardware module. It allows a user to convince a remote party (verifier) that a given computer has an embedded certified hardware module. Importantly, the protocol protects the privacy of the user, as the verifier never sees a user's true identity but random pseudonyms, making it impossible for the verifier to recognize a user from a past communication.

This scenario arose in the context of the Trusted Computing Group (TCG). TCG is an industry standardization body that aims to develop and promote an open industry standard for trusted computing hardware and software building blocks. This standard will enable more secure data storage, online business practices, and online commerce transactions, while protecting privacy. More details on DAA can be found here.

The European Information Security Awards recognize and reward significant achievements in the field of Information security across Europe. These prestigious awards are genuinely independent, and the finalists and winners represent the elite in their field.