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.

Comments

too late

[WinDoze]

prevent you from using your computer in unapproved ways

I already have a wife to do this for me.

Interesting

[wiredog]

Other than Levy, I haven't seen anyone saying that Palladium is even likely to be a good thing. The best people seem to hope for it is that it won't be terrible, and that consumers will avoid it the way they did DIVX.

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?

Re:Interesting

[aredubya74]

The problem with this thinking is that many American consumers remain entirely ignorant about what's under the hood as far as their OS is concerned. From Windows 3.11 to Windows XP, if it came on the PC, it was called "Windows", and it just sort of was there. Thus, if PC retailers buy in to Palladium, the vast majority of consumers will pick it up too. MS will get their cash, the [RI||MP]AA will get their DRM-based OS, and a lot of folks will get screwed in the process.

Rest assured, those of us that build our own systems will rely on Linux and non-DRM'ed Windows (if available). But for the masses, they take what they get, and they use it.

Re:Interesting

[wiredog]

But that's what people said about the 'inevitable' success of DIVX! That American consumers cared not for the underlying tech, and would buy it if it was offered!

They didn't buy it.

Re:Interesting

[Jucius Maximus]

"The problem with this thinking is that many American consumers remain entirely ignorant about what's under the hood as far as their OS is concerned. From Windows 3.11 to Windows XP, if it came on the PC, it was called "Windows", and it just sort of was there. Thus, if PC retailers buy in to Palladium, the vast majority of consumers will pick it up too. MS will get their cash, the [RI||MP]AA will get their DRM-based OS, and a lot of folks will get screwed in the process."

In the midst of all this, I can't help wondering about Apple. They just started their hardcore 'www.apple.com/switch' campaign with TV ads where people talk about how they switched away from their 'horrid little PCs.' Maybe the timing was not by accident. Perhaps they are trying to gain critical mass so they can facilitate a mass switch at the time they estimate Palladium hardware will appear in real machines.

The strategists at Apple must be following this news very closely -- they are probably working on their strategy right now. Rip/Mix/Burn is probably only the beginning. I expect that they will try to equate MacOS with Freedom while Windows == The Borg or something similar.

Yes, Steve Jobs is licking his lips right now. He and his team are laying the foundations right now in preparation for a possible mass exodus from windows, wanting to make sure Apple's arms are waiting and open and they have critical mass in users so popular opinion and word of mouth will divert former Windows users onto MacOS. (I certainly think that this is more likely than a mass exodus into Linux!)

I think that things are gonna get interesting.

Re:Interesting

[JWW]

That's all fine and good until they arrest you for having source code that even has no DRM options in in.

Oh wait, arresting you wouldn't mean much. But arresting Linus would.

Don't think that those bastards that like to call themselves congress aren't going to do something like this.

Re:Interesting

[ink]

This isn't going to be the case with an already existing product (PC's). They're already cheap, and purchased by the masses who don't do the research don't know what they're buying or what it can really be used for. If you're in the market for a PC and don't really know what you want/need or what's available, you're going to end up with the latest windows. PC's don't have a small niche well informed market to insolate the users, the way DVD players did back in the day.

But their Macintosh-using friends (c'mon, everyone knows at least one of them) will be constantly singing praises such as "_my_ computer doesn't tell me that those media files are protected". The same will be true for guru PC users; you know, cousin "Joe" who disseminates advice to everyone will tell people to avoid certain computers like the plauge. The DRM machines may very well be established, and Dell (Gateway, HP, blah) may very well exclusivly sell DRM boxes -- but the small guys won't and the savvy buyers won't, and those people have a bunch of influence.

...and Cringeley

[Otter]

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.

done already isn't it?

[Bazman]

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

Nice on-line FAQ for TCPA/Palladium

[Jabroni54]

Snipped from an e-mail at work.....

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

Re:Nice on-line FAQ for TCPA/Palladium

[rnturn]

Ross Anderson's paper should be required reading. But then that's just my HO.

Just what is so untrustworthy of the PC platform? NOTHING! The platform itself is just fine for what it is supposed to be. It's the software that makes it untrustworthy. Or the people managing that software (who allow breaches through social engineering to occur). So adding a new bit of hardware is going to protect us from irresponsible people?

IBM's computers are not considered untrustworthy. Is it because of special security hardware? NO. It's because the operating systems are written with security in mind from the beginning and not bolted on afterwards. Similarly, other platforms have been considered trustworthy without requiring custom PKI hardware. Wasn't it a system running VMS that resisted all attempts to crack it at the last Defcon? No special security hardware is part of an Alphaserver.

Why has security, all of a sudden, become a hardware problem. Well, Microsoft tries to paint the PC platform as insecure and untrustworthy in an attempt to divert attention from the fact that it's been their software that has been the reason for all the security breaches. The hardware vendors go along with this because of the lure of future CPU and systems sales. IMO, the purpose of Palladium (and TCPA) is to solve an economic problem for some software and hardware vendors.

Remember, Microsoft decided that the best way to deal with the security problems with their software was to hire a lawyer to be their chief security honcho and not someone with extensive credentials in computer security. Rather telling, eh?

Trusted Computing

[gowen]

Remember, Trusted Computing means that large corporations get to trust your hardware because they don't trust you...

Another John Gilmore quote

[splorf]

Be very glad that your PC is insecure--it means that after you buy it, you can break into it and install whatever software you want. What YOU want, not what Sony or Warner or AOL wants.
--John Gilmore (quoted in Ross Anderson, Security Engineering p. 413)

Looks like Microsoft wants to fix that and make sure you can't control your own computer. That which is not forbidden will be compulsory.

Inevitable death of commodity PC

[Gizzmonic]

We're seeing the death of the commodity PC. There's just no money in it anymore, so Microsoft is coming up with this "secure" OS and strictly regulated approach to hardware in order to squeeze some more dough out. We've already seen Dell and Hpaq going down the tubes (relying on stuff like tying contracts to Dellnet, 24 hour tech support, etc to make money).

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.

Fair use laws anyone?

[PierceLabs]

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.

In other news today...

[Noryungi]

I still think it won't work.

Two more reasons:

• The EU still has a pending monopoly investigation on MS
• Some EU institutions may not appreciate Palladium. For instance: would you trust Microsoft with the security of your armed forces if you were, say, the Swedish (neutral country) governement?

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... =)

"That story you read somewhere"

[cananian]

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.

Re:Failure to market

[scott1853]

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.

Microsoft Patent

[Target Drone]

Here's a link to the patent mentioned in the article. For those that just want the jist of it here's the abstract.

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.

Linux and the desktop front

[Dalcius]

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.

Quotable Commentary

[tarsi210]

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.

No death of commodity PCs

[GCP]

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.

Installation vs. Usage - Mac 10 Windows 7, Linux 1

[schmaltz]

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.

I still don't get it

[macemoneta]

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?