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Coursey on Palladium
lrose writes "Check out this story over at ZDNet -- Microsoft is developing a secure operating system to be combined with hardware doing public key cryptography. The DRM aspect reminds me of something I read about an imaginary day in the not-too-distant future, where you can no longer install Linux on your own box because you don't have the necessary rights." Coursey's column is quite interesting, bringing a lot more of the backstory behind Palladium into public view. While geeks have been following and worrying about the TCPA, Microsoft has been working to spin the story with assorted columnists and journalists, so that when it broke it would be in the context that Steven Levy bought into hook, line and sinker: a scheme to protect you rather than one to prevent you from using your computer in unapproved ways.
prevent you from using your computer in unapproved ways
I already have a wife to do this for me.
Which they can. If new systems come Palladium-enabled, don't buy them. Unless you're a hardcore gamer, what would you need an 8GHz system with 2gb ram and 1tb hard drive for anyway?
Best Slashdot Co
Not worth a story of its own, but Robert Cringeley brags in this week's column that Palladium is the Microsoft attempt to replace TCP/IP that he was predicting a year ago.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
On the X-box? You can only run signed programs. Modifying the X-box is a circumvention of a device that's illegal under the DMCA. All Microsoft has to do is port Office and IE to the X-box and voila. Dump Windows and get the masses using X-boxen for their secure and safe computing needs....
Baz
TCPA / Palladium Frequently Asked Questions
Version 0.1 26 June 2002
Ross Anderson
1. What are TCPA and Palladium?
TCPA stands for the Trusted Computing Platform Alliance (TCPA), an initiative led by Intel. Their website is here. Their stated goal is `a new computing platform for the next century that will provide for improved trust in the PC platform.' Palladium appears to be a Microsoft version which will be rolled out in future versions of Windows, will build on TCPA hardware, and will add some extra features. The Palladium announcement appears to have been provoked by a paper I presented on the security issues relating to open source and free software at a conference on Open Source Software Economics in Toulouse on the 20th June. This paper criticised TCPA as anticompetitive. This has been amply confirmed by new revelations over the past few days.
For the rest:
TCPA/Palladium FAQ
Remember, Trusted Computing means that large corporations get to trust your hardware because they don't trust you...
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Where in this article, or the previous articles, does it say that the hardware would not let alternative operating systems be installed? Will only operating systems that use the key embedded into the hardware be "allowed" to install? And if so, how the hell can they accomplish this? It seems like if you can install linux or an older version of windows without using the public/private key stuff then it isn't as much the horrible linux-killing initiative some make it out to be. I'm not trying to troll, flamebait, etc., I'm just curious.
With all these Linux companies, why can there not be a Linux PC or at least one that is not built around this new security hardware? Just because some of the industry heavyweights are behind it does not mean that all air will be pushed out of the room. Consider purchasing chips from Motorola and putting together motherboards based on the specs that IBM release a couple years back. BeOS use to run on it's own Be Box which was all custom hardware.
I for one would be happy to have a Linux PC made by VA, AlienWare or even Dell if they produce good hardware which works well with Linux.
Besides, who needs the hardware to do the security work? Sure you can use cipher/cryptography acceleration in hardware, but you do not have to be dependent on it. What Microsoft will find is they put all this work into a system which is still insecure because they still have a front door with holes through it. How long before a macro shares your private key with everyone on your Outlook Express mailing list. And when there is a hole that is found, do I now have to install a firmware update? That does not sound reasonable.
This sounds like a joke, but Microsoft is known for making these mistakes. They even released the Nimba virus on their Korean distribution of their development suite.
So instead of complaining that Microsoft, Intel and AMD are going to ruin the world for Linux, go out and build a business on better hardware which does not lock you into Microsoft. A modern BeBox similar to an Apple G4 system would be quite welcome as a Linux or FreeBSD system on my desk.
Redhat and the new Linux partnerships should put their resources together and actually produce something, instead of more spin on Linux. Make something significant.
Brennan Stehling - http://brennan.offwhite.net/blog/
Even Mom and Pop PC shops are in on these shenangins (one of my old favorites is now becoming a 'technology consulting firm'). If Microsoft tells them to jump, you bet they'll follow..the same goes with small hardware makers like D-Link and Intel.
In a world of increasingly proprietary hardware, the only solution is buying from a company you can trust. I would suggest a Sun box or Mac for your next PC...or you'll probably have to do a lot of hacking just to get it to play MP3s.
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
One concern I have about widespread distributions of current technology cryptography would be reliance on crypto that is based on difficult (and theoretically complex) calculations. If the only thing that keeps public crypto safe is, for example, the difficuly of factoring, it's safe to say that advances in technology will likely render that difficulty less implausible and more accessible. As Avi said (paraphrase): I want it secret until man is no longer capable of doing evil.
Naturally, this is not an argument for an anti-crypto position. It is merely a caution for overreliance on the secure technologies of today.
sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.
Last time I checked you couldn't circumvent fair use. By building a device that prevents fair use, this Trusted Computing group is creating a device that by its very nature defies the very statutes that the Supreme Court has said are legal!
Specifically there are limits to Copyrights in the following scenarios:
LIMITATIONS ON THE EXCLUSIVE RIGHTS
The copyright owner's exclusive rights are subject to a number of exceptions and limitations that give others the right to make limited use of a copyrighted work. Major exceptions and limitations are outlined in this section.
Ideas
Copyright protects only against the unauthorized taking of a protected work's "expression." It does not extend to the work's ideas, procedures, processes, systems, methods of operation, concepts, principles, or discoveries.
Facts
A work's facts are not protected by copyright, even if the author spent large amounts of time, effort, and money discovering those facts. Copyright protects originality, not effort or "sweat of the brow."
Independent Creation
A copyright owner has no recourse against another person who, working independently, creates an exact duplicate of the copyrighted work. The independent creation of a similar work or even an exact duplicate does not violate any of the copyright owner's exclusive rights.
Fair Use
The "fair use" of a copyrighted work, including use for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. Copyright owners are, by law, deemed to consent to fair use of their works by others.
The Copyright Act does not define fair use. Instead, whether a use is fair use is determined by balancing these factors:
* The purpose and character of the use.
* The nature of the copyrighted work.
* The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole.
* The effect of the use on the potential market for, or value of, the copyrighted work.
But nothing in this specification speaks of how you will still be able to maintain your fair use rights. If they build it, people should proactively sue them because its a rights violation for it to exist at all.
I was surprised to see that somebody didn't pick up on Cringely remarks here, seeing as they support the enlightened opinion of skepticism of Microsoft, and document how Palladium is using Microsoft's security weaknesses as an excuse to make all internet technology closed proprietary Microsoft Technology.
A fairly damning read, and it lays it all out
The Microsoft solution to the problems caused by Microsoft is to give control of everything to Microsoft.
Usually, I thought the answer was to remove the sdource of the problem, not to strengthen it.
2002-06-29 01:24:55 Cringely On Palladium (articles,news) (rejected)
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Two more reasons:
You have to remember that this is the same company that used the ominous variable "NSA_KEY" in some of its security software...
Not that I believe the NSA was responsible of this particular blunder... =)
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
I believe that "that story [the poster] read somewhere" was Richard Stallman's "dystopian short story" The Right To Read. I'd recommend giving it a gander, as it appears RMS was remarkable prescient: his story was published five years ago in the Communications of the ACM.
[
Actually I would think that there are some motherboard manufacturers out there that would give us a nice little BIOS switch to turn it on and off. Hell, my last Gigabyte board came with a Windows utility to overclock it (never worked but it was a nice try).
Other hardware vendors aren't going to incorporated that code into non-updatable hardware chips. It'll either be software or the chips will be flashable. In either case somebody will hack it.
Uh... if you don't want this Palladium, and other up-and-coming tools of the devil, why not stick with what you have? The frenzy of the switch from Win3.1 is over - mostly. I actually know some people who still use it. It works. I think - and hope - the public has discovered that buying the Latest Version doesn't necessarily help anything, and can be a royal pain in the ass. I believe we're reaching a point where consumers will demand that these Wonderful New Versions are worth their time and energy. Perhaps they won't be spoon-fed whatever crap MS spits out.
My 2 cents.
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
A digital rights management operating system protects rights-managed data, such as downloaded content, from access by untrusted programs while the data is loaded into memory or on a page file as a result of the execution of a trusted application that accesses the memory. To protect the rights-managed data resident in memory, the digital rights management operating system refuses to load an untrusted program into memory while the trusted application is executing or removes the data from memory before loading the untrusted program. If the untrusted program executes at the operating system level, such as a debugger, the digital rights management operating system renounces a trusted identity created for it by the computer processor when the computer was booted. To protect the rights-managed data on the page file, the digital rights management operating system prohibits raw access to the page file, or erases the data from the page file before allowing such access. Alternatively, the digital rights management operating system can encrypt the rights-managed data prior to writing it to the page file. The digital rights management operating system also limits the functions the user can perform on the rights-managed data and the trusted application, and can provide a trusted clock used in place of the standard computer clock.
someone posted a reply faster than me, but i already wrote all this so here it is.
the question isn't about being able to use linux. it is about being able to connect to things through linux. if your OS does not use the TCPA device it can still use the rest of the computer. but if in order to get access to media files you need something from that device, you cannot use those media files. this is not limited to media / content, but could conceivably be used to authenticate anything. software patches, websites, webstores, email, etc could all potentially be infected with palladium.
where linux loses is that it is built from source. only binaries will be signed, and signing will likely cost money. it isn't really that difficult to understand.
since not so many people use Linux in proportion to Windows users, the minority is screwed if the majority is tricked into accepting this "great" technology. islands of linux users will probably survive, but they will be segragated from the other 91% of PC owners running Windows.
so yes, you can still use Linux if Palladium gets broad implementation. but you won't be able to use it for all of the same things you can now.
there doesn't need to be a great use for Palladium itself in order for it to be widely implemented. all there needs to be is some "great new" form of content that is only available in a Palladium limited, er i mean enhanced, format.
you probably shouldn't have read this.
Interesting idea, but according to Goodwin's Law, the first party in a discussion to mention "Hitler" or "Nazi" has lost the discussion.
I wonder if the law should be updated to include "terrorist"?
Disclaimer: opinion follows. Notice sig.
Once businesses change over to a Linux desktop to avoid subscription licensing fees, software lock-in, and improve interoperability (read: open standards), people will learn Linux. They will see how fast, easy, stable and simple it is to use for normal applications.
*Note: before you debate me on these points, please take the time to use a RH 7.x system with Ximian GNOME - install and usage really is simple for the avg. joe. At least it is for my family and friends.
Once employees see this, they'll want Linux at home. And the Linux desktop market will develop, much like it did with Windows in the early 90's. Wal-Mart and Fry's already sell lower-end Linux based PCs. I've heard speculation for a long time that the retailers would never sell a Linux box until a market developed.
Honestly, I don't see a feasible market at the moment, besides selling to Linux junkies like myself. Over about 95% of all desktops today are running Windows, a few percent are Macs, and even fewer (desktops, mind you, not total boxen) run Linux. Even so, Wal-Mart, a very large company, is investing in a tiny sliver of the desktop market.
Maybe they're willing to take a greater risk than many of us thought? Maybe their ITs have more insight into the future of the desktop than many of us thought? I can't find any other reason than those -- if anyone has any ideas, please say so.
One thought is that Macs are still around and don't have but a few percent. Although this is comparable to Linux, Linux is new and there is no guarantee of returned money on an investment. Mac junkies have been around for quite some time, and have continued to purchase Macs.
In either case, two years ago, I didn't think Linux was for anyone but developers. Now my mom can use it, and she's not even average when it comes to computer literacy. Linux has come so far in the last 2 years that I don't see how it can't go further. The user and developer bases are growing, and it looks like Linux is here to stay.
Stability and options have been here. Features (e.g. virtual desktops) have been here. Openness and freedom have been here. Ease of use is becoming more common, and the user base is growing. The only thing this Linux junkie sees missing is application/file-type support, but that is coming as well, and quickly.
I forsee Linux busting into the desktop market and becoming a serious contender within two years. Of course it will take time for a large change, but I think it's coming.
~Dalcius
Rome wasn't burnt in a day.
From the: Quotes-to-cringe-by dept.
MICROSOFT PROMISES--and I believe that they're serious--that users will control their own personal information.
Since when? Since when do people trust M$, the company that has time-and-again said that software is secure when it's not, that they provide customer support when they don't, that they're not trying to be a monopoly when they are, that they're not strong-arming 3rd party manufacturers when Craig Barrett is clearly wincing? If the EULA doesn't scare you yet, you aren't paying attention.
But how this plays in the real world, where users often have very little power, remains to be seen.
Ah, maybe in your little world of sheeple, but folks like me give ourselves power through OSes that don't patronize.
Microsoft has one key factor in its favor: the growing realization among its customers that we must do something, and that tomorrow's digital devices--and I'm talking much more than PCs here--need the trustworthiness that Microsoft claims Palladium will offer.
I think he's missing the boat on this one. Users don't give a rats banana about trust, or they wouldn't be using passwords like "mypassword" when checking Hotmail. They simply don't care about that. What they care about is the *big*bad*unknown* screwing up their ability to email, type letters to their friends, and have cybersex on AIM. If their OS provides that, they're fine. Trust is marketing B$ for "we're gonna cuddle you like a foster parent and shield you from the big bad world."
But is the world ready to trust Microsoft on something it has such a hard time explaining? and implementing, and supporting, and documenting, and....
Holy smoke-n-mirrors, Batman.
Blog,Twitter
--NBVB
Give it a little more time. I don't think that many XP users have gotten to the point where they've attempted to add or change the hardware on their PC and triggered the XP `you must reactivate' process. Once that starts to happen, I bet you'll hear more users begin squawking.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
I'm assuming that by "commodity PC" you mean a standard x86 machine onto which you can install a non-MS x86 OS.
If the chips/BIOS are set up in such a way as to literally prevent the installation of a non-MS OS onto the bare machine, then there will be enough market demand for machines without this restriction that the market will fork. I'm not claiming that it will fork half-and-half, just that there will be enough demand in the world to create a market. The market may be too small or politically sensitive for the likes of Dell or HPAQ, but some Asian manufacturer(s) could make a good living off that market.
More likely, the existence of the extra crypto hardware can be accommodated by new designs in Linux/*BSD/etc. and might actually become quite useful to a user with complete personal control over its capabilities.
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."
Anyone want to guess how long until the word "terrorism" gets in somewhere?
Another terrorist attack or two, and Americans will be begging for this stuff. Hopefull that won't happen.
I was at first reluctant into saying this technology is all bad. Its easy to get into an anti-Microsoft jihad.
But this technology is all bad.
I can't believe that MSN article, I really can't. Its a silly spin on this technology that isn't going to last. Here's some stuff from the MSN article on what this stuff is going to do:
"Tells you who you're dealing with--and what they're doing. Palladium is all about deciding what's trustworthy. It not only lets your computer know that you're you , but also can limit what arrives (and runs on) your computer, verifying where it comes from and who created it."
We already have this, its called Public Key Encryption or alternatively Symmetric Encryption. Free Software users already have GNU Privacy Guard at our disposal.
Of course, the downside of this technology is that it isn't too useful over the internet without creating a rather large web of trust -- a very difficult task. I'd like to know how Palladium would rectify this?
"Protects information. The system uses high-level encryption to 'seal' data so that snoops and thieves are thwarted. It also can protect the integrity of documents so that they can't be altered without your knowledge."
First, we already have high-level encryption. And most anti-virus programs 'innoculate' your files anyway. This only sounds like Microsoft is targeting the anti-virus next -- by integrating them into the operating system.
"Stops viruses and worms. Palladium won't run unauthorized programs, so viruses can't trash protected parts of your system."
I haven't used Windows since Windows 95, but I know Unix-like systems have had multi-user security since practically forever. Its heavily suggested to new users to set up their own accounts on their system to use. "protected parts" os a Unix-like system is whatever root owns, which is quite a lot.
"Cans spam. Eventually, commercial pitches for recycled printer cartridges and barnyard porn can be stopped before they hit your inbox--while unsolicited mail that you might want to see can arrive if it has credentials that meet your standards."
So basically digital signatures for real this time...
"Safeguards privacy. With Palladium, it's possible not only to seal data on your own computer, but also to send it out to 'agents' who can distribute just the discreet pieces you want released to the proper people. Microsofties have nicknamed these services 'My Man.' If you apply for a loan, you'd say to the lender, 'Get my details from My Man,' which, upon your authorization, would then provide your bank information, etc. Best part: Da Man can't read the information himself, and neither can a hacker who breaks into his system."
This may sound interesting, depending on how its implemented. But what can this Palladium technology offer that a sane encryption policy can't? And whats going to prevent users from screwing up the security?
(side note: "My Man" sounds really funny)
"Controls your information after you send it. Palladium is being offered to the studios and record labels as a way to distribute music and film with 'digital rights management' (DRM). This could allow users to exercise 'fair use' (like making personal copies of a CD) and publishers could at least start releasing works that cut a compromise between free and locked-down. But a more interesting possibility is that Palladium could help introduce DRM to business and just plain people. 'It's a funny thing,' says Bill Gates. 'We came at this thinking about music, but then we realized that e-mail and documents were far more interesting domains.' For instance, Palladium might allow you to send out e-mail so that no one (or only certain people) can copy it or forward it to others. Or you could create Word documents that could be read only in the next week. In all cases, it would be the user, not Microsoft, who sets these policies."
And we're back to digital rights management. Does anyone know how to implement what they say with the Word document with the technology we have now? It almost sounds like an Actually Useful Feature. "This email will self-destruct," kind of thing.
But really, this thing is about enforcing what some people consider an unconstitutionally unlimited copyright system. Not to mention what kind of havoc would be caused if trademarks were decided to be under the umbrella of digital rights.
One thing the Coursey article confirmed is that Microsoft does have a patent on this technology -- it seems logical they would license this under the CIFS (no GPL or copyleft) pretty much excluding free software from implementing this.
Because this stuff was leaked so early, there is still time (they are saying like four or five years) for someone to build up a response to this. Or it will simply flop because the market won't like it. Or what I think is likely is that DVDs will only be allowed to play on Palladium-approved machines. Then we'll have a mix of Palladium and non-Palladium machines, one with a superset of the features of the other.
Which one will Mr. and Mrs. Ignorant want to buy for their son?
install and usage really is simple for the avg. joe.
Installation of a Windows or Mac software package is *nothing* like on a Linux box. Flame me if you will, I just don't know what to call this expectation on the part of Linux jocks -egoism, chauvinism- but downloading and manually building a package and its dependencies, sometimes rebuilding the kernel. It's just not the same as an installshield-type GUI installer, and I won't apologize for it.
Debian comes closer on this -this is my daily system. Even though I love it, I could never, ever expect family members or non-tech friends to support their own system. If they lived under the same roof, yes, of course. But to hand somebody a CD and say, go ahead, you can replace your Windows installation, is just silly. Your typical non-tech won't make it past disk partitioning unaided.
Take, f'rinstance, video formats. Yes, there is a package now for viewing AVIs under Linux. But to get it working is another matter. And compare Mac TCP/IP versus Linux -a single, simple dialog box versus the commandline (yes, I know various distros have dialogs too, but they mostly suck, and I'm talking about Linux common denominators here.)
In order for Linux to "rule" the desktop (as many hope it will), there needs to be the same simplicity in setup, maintenance and use as its competition- MacOS and Windows. Otherwise, Linux will never get more marketshare.
Big Daddy, Johnny, Burp, Aunt Zelda, Scott, Slurp, Big Momma
Interesting idea, but according to Goodwin's Law, the first party in a discussion to mention "Hitler" or "Nazi" has lost the discussion.
Godwins Law is a joke.
Seriously, it was a tounge in cheek joke about USENET flames of its day. It was never considered by its creator to be an actual, accurate commentary on internet speech, much less some deeply wise insight into the human psyche, and certainly not as a new "rule" of debate.
In other words, Godwins Law was never intended to be used as relative newcomers to the net have come to use it today: to make the most potent lessons of modern history offlimits to any discussion that might benefit from contemplating those lessons, not least of which is a discussion of technology that is designed to excersize draconian prior restraint on how and perhaps even when people can use their own property, within their own home, by a large, convicted monopolist.
NAZIWARE is the most appropriate term I've heard for Palladium/DRM since this entire debate began a few months ago. We should not dismiss it because of some misguided references to a tired old joke being bandied about as though they were some kind of deep Internet Wisdom.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Maybe I haven't had enough caffeine today, but what's to prevent someone from using software emulation for the hardware functions in Palladium? Wouldn't this allow the security and authenticity checks (and DRM) to be circumvented?
The problem is that a PC is a general purpose computing platform. It's not a DVD player, or a CD player or even an email station. It's anything the software makes it. And it has lots of free CPU cycles these days for things like emulation. If the software never invokes the CPU functions or uses a software protocol stack instead of the hardware stacks, you can do anything you want.
You can hack the firmware (like what's been done to DVD players), you can even patch the CPU with hacked microcode. If you can't, then you need to upgrade your hardware when Palladium 1.1 comes out. And 1.2, and...
Why not simply prove that the design is faulty before it gets out of the gate?
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.
I must admit, this is a masterful stroke. It appears to give users additional control over their computer's security, while limiting the options in such a way that it actually concentrates that control into others' hands.
[NOTE: Since real information about Palladium is pretty fuzzy right now, I'm theorizing a bit about its capabilities for now. Only time will tell...]
It can remove my power to choose what's authorized to run on my computer. It can prevent usage of "untrusted" or "unauthorized" code. Lovely turn of phrase, that. Notice how it uses the passive to avoid any implication of *who* is trusting or authorizing the code? "Palladium is all about deciding what's trustworthy. It not only lets your computer know that you're you , but also can limit what arrives (and runs on) your computer, verifying where it comes from and who created it." The implication is that the user is in control, but who decides?
I have not yet seen anything saying how programs are authorized. It would be logical to set up a coalition to do this, and use membership agreements to control the behavior and competitiveness of its members, and exclude undesirables. We can see prior art in the way the DVD-CCA controls access to the CSS keys and uses that control to enforce region controls and lack of digital output.
It can remove my power to access information, since Palladium "can limit what arrives" on my computer. In other words, the authorization control can extend beyond code to data. If a site does not have a valid Palladium authorization (however those are issued), then Palladium may be able to prevent access to it (and tell me that it has saved me from an "unauthorized site"). Again, the key to this control rests in the authorization process.
It can remove my power to customize my computer. No, I'm not talking about case mods, I'm talking about OS and program configuration. In order to maintain a "trustworthy" system, it will have to limit access to the configuration system. Assuming they keep something like the Windows Registry, I can see two options here. They may refuse to authorize regedit, et al., and remove OS authorization from any registry touched by those programs. Or they may remove the my ability to change anything "critical" (by some definition or other) in the registry.
Ultimately, it can force a choice between "all-Palladium" and "no-Palladium". If it can refuse to run unauthorized programs or access unauthorized sites while any authorized programs are running or authorized sites are being accessed, then I cannot work in both realms at the same time. I must either choose "Palladium" ("safe") or "non-Palladium" ("dangerous"). It could also deal with these realms asymmetrically: if I try to use Palladium resources, it could automatically close all non-Palladium resources (and tell me that it has saved me from danger), but if I try to use non-Palladium resources, it might refuse to load them until I had manually closed all of my Palladium resources, and perhaps rebooted.
Faced with this choice, how many users will be willing to give up some useful non-Palladium resources rather than giving up all Palladium resources? Immanentizing the false dichotomy, anyone?
I sure hope I'm wrong about this, and that I'm just being too paranoid. Unfortunately, recent history seems to show that we need a really healthy dose of paranoia when dealing with things like this. Again, only time will tell for sure.