Remote attestation in trusted computing is about the ability of a local platform to authenticate the hardware and the software stack running on a remote trusted platform. We say that this process is successful, if a local platform is able to authenticate each layer in the remote stack; it is meaningful if, by using this information, the local platform can make its own evaluation on the safety of the platform environment where the remote application is running.

In this paper we analyze the credentials and beliefs that are necessary to a local platform in order for the remote attestation process to be both successful and meaningful.