Introduction

In recent years, in keeping with progress in IT technology and the spread network infrastructure, and, furthermore, the enlargement of user layers, people are trying to make social activities efficient by computerizing the distribution of information in all sorts of social settings. At this time what becomes important is information security.

Making social activities efficient through information technology also simultaneously makes malicious acts efficient. In all sorts of areas, such as bugging, forging, and the creation of pirated editions, information technology makes the risks and costs of carrying out malfeasance extremely small. Furthermore, this combination of end users unacquainted with computers that have flowed into the networked society in large numbers and malicious persons acquainted with computers is giving birth to a very extreme and undesirable situation in which malicious persons can target end users one-sidedly, and, moreover, with maximum efficiency and minimum risk.

In order to create desirable digitization and networking of social activities, we have to spread a security infrastructure that can easily be utilized by ordinary end users, and that can sufficiently raise the risk and cost of conducting malicious activities. That is something like, for example, a lock on a house. While being the crystallization of high precision engineering technology, to ordinary people it is easy to understand and can be simply utilized by only managing a piece of metal called a key, and to people planning malicious activities it requires the greatest risk and cost in illegally opening the door.

From this type of understanding, we have developed eTRON (Entity TRON)--a wide-area distributed system architecture in which we have made as the core technology a tamper-proof chip into which we safely store information that will become the key in computerized social activities, and that can be made to circulate on the digital information infrastructure.

Electronic Entities

When we consider the qualities that cannot be realized with digital information of the present while being necessary in the informationalization of social activities, what serves as their model are probably the paper types of certificates and the like and the keys of locks.

For example, one important contrivance for society to function is the circulation of value information. One of the most important kinds of value information in present-day society is currency, and, in addition, there are various certificates, securities, tickets, and the like. These could be called certificates that guarantee rights. In order for these to hold efficacy, at the time time they are circulated, the fact that they have not been forged or altered has to be guaranteed. Actual certificate types have obtained this guarantee by means of paper and ink quality and high level printing, and through the difficulty of reproducing the physical qualities called the watermark.

On the one hand, important qualities of the key are that it puts the privilege through which one can open and close a certain door into a small piece of metal, and that it is made so that it can always kept on one's person. That which is made so it can carry out as a universally easy-to-understand simile based on a small piece of metal the management of privileges, which is to say, blocking theft and illegal utilization keeping it on one's person, lending it to another person in response to a necessity, or having a copy made at a locksmith's, is a key.

Accordingly, we call special digital information that gives the qualities that these physical entities possess, such as wholeness, difficulty of fabrication, impossibility of reproduction, difficulty of altering, and portability, "electronic entities," and we have decided to do research and development on eTRON (Entity TRON)--an architecture for realizing these--as a part of our TRON Project. We think we will be able to carry out a desirable digitization and networking of social activities by realizing digital entities in possession of these qualities while maintaining the advantages of digital information, such as being transferable via networks and having it possible for computers to easily grasp the contents.

eTRON Architecture

In realizing this type of electronic entity, software alone is insufficient, and thus support by means of hardware is indispensable. At present, it is possible to carry out this support by using a hardware device with tamper-proof features. Electronic entities are stored only inside eTRON devices, and they are transmitted only among eTRON devices. The eTRON devices are linked via a Virtual Private Network (VPN) based on cryptographic techology that has been made public, and in that process, reproduction, bugging, and alteration are not permitted. Then, the operations that can be carried out against the electronic entities inside the eTRON device are restricted. That thus said is the basic idea of eTRON.

On top of this basic idea, the general-purpose wide-area distributed system architecture that realizes electronic entities and is made so that it is possible to construct applications that utilize their qualities on open communications infrastructure such as the Internet is eTRON.

eTRON is to the last a framework for the purpose of making it possible for an end user to easily utilize applications that employ high-level security technology. For that reason, it is neither something that designates specific encryption algorithms or authentication methods, nor is it something that relies upon them. It is a framework in which we introduce into the same ring various encryption and authentication technologies.

In the future, through improving the possibility of deciphering based on advances in mathematical theory and progress in computer technology, we can imagine that encryption algorithms themselves will become ineffective, and that we will be drawn to the necessity of modifying the technology in answer to this. Accordingly, in an information security infrastructure, what is important is being able to to modify encryption and authentication methods and being able to handle multiple different methods in the fault tolerant sense without changing the overall framework or application system.

The State of eTRON Devices

In the TRON Project at present, we have constructed multiple types of eTRON devices matched to uses.

First, in July 2001, we developed eTRON/8 as a non-contact card-type eTRON device employing an 8-bit microcontroller. As the non-contact communication interface, we installed ISO/IEC 14443, which is able to operate without a power supply through this weak induced current. On the other hand, because it did not possess large computer resources, the functions we could provide were limited.

In 2002, we developed eTRON/16 as a contact-type eTRON device employing a 16-bit microcontroller. As the contact communication interface, we have equipped it with ISO/IEC 7816. It is assumed that we will mainly utilize this by embedding it in computer nodes, such as
T-Engine and µT-Engine. Also, we have equipped it with high-function instructions for supporting applications that handle electronic entities, such as electronic books, electronic tickets, and VPN routers.

At present, we are developing a dual-type eTRON/16 that has both the ISO/IEC 7816-specification contact communication interface and the ISO/IEC 14443-specification non-contact communication interface. We are also developing eTRON/32, which employs a 32-bit microcontroller that has more abundant computer resources. Furthermore, we are also pressing ahead with development of an eTRON server that will be realized not through a single chip eTRON device centering on a card type, but rather through a server-type, large-scale tamper-proof cabinet.

The Utilization of eTRON

eTRON/8 has already actually been used in many places, and it possesses results in which more than 300,000 people utilized it.

Between July and September of 2001, Expo 2001: Experience the Future was held in the city of Kobe in Hyogo Prefecture. The eTRON/8 card was used as an admission ticket at that exposition site. Expo 2001: Experience the Future was aimed at edutainment in which one learned about the past of the international city of Kobe and could imagine a future Kobe that science and technology would bring. At this exposition, it was possible to pseudo-experience the Kobe computer city of the future, as smart space, in which various information matched to visitors, was constructed in the exposition. The device that realized the interface between this smart space and visitors was eTRON/8. eTRON/8 quickly presented information on the interests and knowledge of the visitor to the smart space, and the smart space provided optimal information matched to that information. Furthermore, lots of stores had set up stalls in the exposition site, and eTRON/8 was utilized as an electronic money card at these. By means of this, we were able to actually prove the merits of eTRON/8 in multipurpose uses.

Between January and February of 2002, over a period of about a month, a "Digital Museum III" exhibit was held at the University Museum of the University of Tokyo. The eTRON/8 card was used as the entrance ticket at this time. All museum visitors carried a "Museum Card" that was made with eTRON/8, and all the exhibits we constructed so as to use this "Museum Card." By means of this, information about what exhibit was seen when was stored, and it was possible to make changes to the viewing course to match that. In addition, we also conducted a service in which we provided via the Internet additional information about the exhibits seen that day, which could be viewed from home after returning home.

At present, eTRON is being used in computer exhibit corner of the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation, which opened in July 2001. The National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation is a science museum aimed at showing off Japanese science and technology to the world. Lots of TRON technology is also on display there.

Moreover, at the YRP Ubiquitous Networking Laboratory, we have adopted eTRON/8 as an employee ID, and it is utilized as the user device for a workplace-wide, integrated security system in such things as employee identification with keys inside the workplace or controlling conference facilities.