Slashdot Mirror
Gates and Lasser on Palladium
A rather funny juxtaposition this morning - Bill Gates or someone with his signature stamp sent a spam-gram to pretty much everyone who receives any sort of Microsoft email: Bill only mentions Digital Rights Management in one throw-away sentence. And like most other spam, he promises it's a one-time mailing. On the other hand, Jon Lasser of Think Unix fame takes a harsher look at Microsoft's vision of a world where your computer is trusted against you.
I would never would have thought MS would spam, that is something only desperate companies do.
And here I thought that was a personal note to me. I have spent the last three hours writing my personal reply. Guess I will just send it to this nice Nigerian man who just emailed me, he just suffered a personal tragedy and seems to need some support.
Chet
No, not of MS, but of Slashdot.
When someone mentions they gave up Linux for Windows (don't feel like searching for the link, but it was a story last week), everyone on slashdot supported MS, and ran against Linux.
But, a few stories later, we find ourselves reaming MS.
Now MS tries to address subjects YOU WANT THEM TO ADDRESS, and the linux community is in an uproar.
I'd like to suggest what someone suggested in the "give up linux" article.
We need to STOP railing MS, and start boosting Linux. I don't want Linux to be successful if the success is based on dirty marketing against MS.
What's worse is this wasn't even submitted to slashdot, its an editor attempting to push MS into a story so we can all moan about it.
I think it'd be in Linux's best interest if Slashdot didn't write anything negative about MS, just tech updates or whatever. It'd be a lot more mature than the dung-flinging that goes on here.
This hypocracy is just as bad as putting restrictions on users and preaching online rights...
BTW - I'm expecting a being modded down, especially editor moderation (how do you make a broken moderation system, worse? Absolute power, of course!), I'm just venting some steam (and losing some karma).
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
A nice, and a propos story by RMS, called The Right to Read, can be found here. Definitely worth the read.
Fuck it
Until of course the remote server is comprimised and suddenly explorer.exe is an untrusted binary and every windows machine in the world shits a brick.
I think the community's response to DRM is wrong. I don't think that the analysis of it is wrong -- it's a very negative technology. But I think the response is a little off.
If MS wants to put the interests of the large media companies ahead of the interests of its own customers, the people who actually buy the computers and the software, why not let them take it to the market? Let's let the market decide what it thinks of that. Let's give them enough rope to hang themselves.
The thing that we have to worry about is some sort of legal framework that requires all computers to respect some DRM system.
MS is way ahead on the desktop, and their systems have gotten a lot better than they used to be. The only way they're going to get dislodged from that position is by making a really catastrophic mistake.
This could be that mistake!
I think there's a lesson in the current stock market scandals. The big companies can buy legislators. They've shown that they can derail effective regulation of accounting rules. They can set things up so that a crooked CFO who bilks people out of billions and sends the markets into a spiral that wipes out the savings of millions of people gets a lighter punishment than a punk who robs a liquor store.
But in the end, there's nothing they can do against the force of the market itself. They got cocky -- they thought they could get away with anything. It turns out that they can't.
Neither can the DRM boys.
Did you read the articles at all? It is plainly said that Palladium will not eliminate application layer virii. That means Joe Sixpack *will* be getting more Outlook & Word virii. What he won't be able to do is to watch unlicensed content. It is plain that this has nothing to do with Joe Sixpack's security but only with content protection Hollywood and total control by Microsoft.
The problem with everyone's understanding of TCPA/Palladium is that there won't be a single authority (flying Black Helicopters over your PC at night). Big companies like IBM (and especially the government) may use it for document control, but that's about it. What Palladium will do for the world is:
* End the untrusted binary problem. Viruses will be blacklisted by a remote server - no more email viruses, ever...
You are contradicting yourself in mere two sentences. No black helicopters? They don't need them. THe server you mention later is *way* better. Whoever controls that server - controls your PC.
Cheers,
D.
If Palladium succeeds, and Linux doesn't follow, then Linux machines will be the only computers that can get viruses. How ironic would that be?
I would rather be bombarded by viruses than have my hardware sign off my hardware and sanity to big corporations so they can tell me what to do, and how to use them.
Ask yourself this question: "Would you rather drive a Ferrari in a prison, or Honda Civic out in the city"
Did you even READ the damned article?
Most of the vulnerabilities represented in the article execute inside the already-authorized binary. Palladium will not prevent or fix that problem. Palladium can stop unsigned binaries from being run and provide a measure of content control, but not prevention of vulnerability or risk.
AFA Linux goes - more likely than not, Linux won't run at all on Palladium hardware...and besides, do you really want to start counting how many Linux viruses there've been vs. the number of Microsoft Windows ones? I didn't think so.
Palladium in the home sector is just BAD BAD BAD. I don't want any of it. None. It's too bad short-sighted people like you are so eager to adopt a fascist draconian design in the false veil of added security.
sedawkgrep
Is that a salami in my pants or am I just happy to be me?
- I am almost tempted to initiate a "you get a virus your computer get's wiped" policy here.. maybe, just maybe it would make those morons and idiots in sales and marketing think before opening something looking for their advice.
Your elitist attitude offends me somewhat.Stop your deluded fantasies that the only intelligent people in the world are those who know how to use a computer.
This is because when it matters, Microsoft's security is tough as nails.
So, I guess the next question is obvious: why doesn't it matter in their products?
Who here do you think wanted MicroSoft to address DRM in the operating system? I'd guess almost nobody.
Who here do you think wanted MicroSoft to address the 'problem' of users having complete control over their own machines? Again, nobody.
I see no change in attitude here at all. The Slashdot crowd has always disliked DRM and giving Bill the keys to your computer--and that's exactly why there is so much anger at Palladium.
And while I agree with you that we'd be better off boosting Linux than trashing MicroSoft all the time, you still have to point out significant dangers when you see them.
- http://www.attrition.org/security/commentary/ms16
. html : Including the Windows Update site -- which I suspect they "pay attention to". - http://www.computeruser.com/news/01/01/25/news9.h
t ml - http://www.vnunet.com/News/1115617
- http://cert.uni-stuttgart.de/archive/isn/2001/05/
m sg00028.html
Indeed, that first page includes the interesting fact: So I guess for Microsoft, "never" has the same definition as "always" does for their uptimes: some short duration.The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
One of the ...ahem... interesting things Bill says is: "We're also working with others throughout the industry to improve Internet protocols to stop email that could propagate misleading information or malicious code that falsely appears to be from trusted senders." (emphasis added)
Bob Cringley has written a couple of good articles on eactly this, the second related directly to Palladium. Check them out.
Cringley also has an article on the consequences of Palladium not working.
Sailing over the event horizon
Six months ago, I sent a call-to-action to Microsoft's 50,000 employees, outlining what I believe is the highest priority for the company and for our industry over the next decade: building a Trustworthy Computing environment for customers that is as reliable as the electricity that powers our homes and businesses today.
Well that's reassuring! I think the general population of California would like for computers to be a bit more reliable that their electric grid!
And even if you're not in CA, electric power is notoriously unreliable. Brownouts, power outages, power spikes, 120V vs. 220V, etc. Is Bill trying to tell us that Windows will never be reliable at all?
Having seen MacWorld NY and nifty little gizmos like a 20gig iPod that should have media corps coughing up hairballs in a matter of days, what of Palladium and DRM when it comes to Apple?
Now granted the **AA's would just love to have a very tight DRM system, and Palladium underneath it all would be like a market research holy grail(knowing the marketeers behavior), but thats all at this point a Windows thing.
Setting aside OSS for the moment, what about the few other players? Apple primarily, but there are a few others. And what if someone wants to truely innovate a new OS?
This is _way_ too controlling a system. I think the barrier to entry would effectively become a steel bulkhead (for any truely new OS).
And what exactly is Apple's position on all this? Especially since OS X. And sooner or later there will be a fairly usable Darwin for x86. If the hardware begins to limit the software as is predicted, them perhaps MS should just make its own hardware for its new OS's. Open up its abandon-ware for the rest of us and strike out along the path of Apple.
Frankly I think all of this is going to fail. And no system will be secure until we can get rid of the users =P
Large businesses often have an offical 'whitelist' model anyway. Their computer support depts. install the software, and the majority of their users don't have the knowledge how to install new stuff. So what happens? Word viruses, Excell viruses, Outlook viruses. It's no good having a whitelist if your whitelist includes programs with vunerabilities, and unfortunatly a majority of applications DO.
Ok this might be completley ludicrious but here it goes.
I would like to see Microsoft and Intel team up and go one way, while AMD and everyone else go the other.
Then Microsoft can lock down everyones PC like apple and do whatever they want to. The rest of us will then be able to enjoy our open systems.
Crazy idea? You decide.
Stupid job ads, weird spam, occasional insight at
I think one of the interesting things about the rise of Microsoft and the IBM clone PC in general is that it proved that an open, extensible system is going to win out. It doesn't matter how good your closed system is, it just won't win out (witness: Mac vs DOS).
And here we are, it's 2002, and Microsoft, the company that most benefited from having the PC architecture open, is now seeking to close it. For "security". As more restrictions are added, fewer interesting things will happen on the system, and people will start to look elsewhere to get what they want and need.
It's sad that Microsoft has forgotten what got them where they are in the first place. Look for Apple to do even better once Palladium hits.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
I am confident we can and will create a truly Trustworthy Computing environment.
Anyone else notice Bills interesting capitalization at the end of the letter? Perhaps we can expect another generic trademark soon?
So, I guess it has finally happened. People don't use the word trustworthy to describe M$, so M$ just created a way for trustworthy to be used with all M$ activities! I guess that is more profitable than actually becoming trustworthy.
-Sean
Does anyone remember the fight over the clipper phones? The clipper system used mandatory private key escrows. The idea was that if you bought a clipper phone, the secret key would exist in a government db somewhere. If they wanted to wiretap you, they'd just have to look your key up and decrypt the signal.
It wasn't a rejection of the clipper ideology that sank the proposal. It was a proof that it would be possible to build counterfeit clipper phones that would interact with the system. The NSA screwed up, they built a system that wasn't strong enough.
It seems to me that palladium would face a similar challenge. How do they differentiate between a rogue board that pretends to be palladium compliant and a real one? Especially in a world with flashable BIOS?
What's to stop people from buying boards that will be palladium switchable? If you want to run Windows, you can set the BIOS one way, if you want to run Linux, you can set the BIOS to disregard it?
Or what's to stop people from making boards that accept any signature without checking it? MSs software would think it was on a palladium compliant system, but you could run whatever you wanted.
Palladium is yet another example of Microsoft's flawed software strategy. MS constantly thinks: If there is something wrong, make new products to fix it. Doesn't anyone else think that this is flawed??? Oh yeah...you can't sell stuff like that as much as new "I have better features than my previous version" software.
Palladium is a bandage over the broken user/networking model and the interfaces to them. Instead of stepping back and considering the reasons why most users and processes MUST run as Administrator(locally and network wise), Microsoft wants to promise that yet more software that will sort out the issue for you without thinking. Installing software on a Win2K system can be a bear if permissions have to be setup a certain way. How hard is it going to be to install software on a Palladium system?? Don't think the new Word for Palladium. Think about the legacy software you are still required to use. That should send shivers down any IT Staff's collective spines.
And, at the worst, Palladium fails to fix a giant class of problems. IIS will no doubt in MS's mind be a trusted program to run. However monkeying with "default.ida" isn't something it should be doing. Palladium can protected from "mystery.exe" which is unsigned from running but seems to make no provision for trusted binaries suddenly behaving badly. Default settings, denial of serivce, etc. have nothing to do with signed code.
Beyond this a computer is supposed to get out of the way and let you do your tasks. A "well oiled" Linux machine can do this for tasks. Mac users rave about how its OS goes way into the background when a task is executed. MS through Palladium seeks to get more in the way to protect us from ourselves. Why does Joe Sixpack want a computer that is even more "in your face" than it is now?
As for the future of Linux with Palladium looming on the horizon. I'm not worried. In fact I forsee a great boon in virtual execution environments on Linux and BSD where you can choose to ignore Palladium rules if you the user choose to do so.
Microsoft is truly foolish if they expect to have people switch to Palladium. The majority of their customers were pissed with XP, just having to call Microsoft if they updated their hardware. Now, they expect people to buy new hardware so they can be told what they can't run? Personally, I think Palladium might end up being a new NT, but I seriously doubt it will ever be like Microsoft claims it will.
The way every talks about TCPA/Palladium, you'd think it was the biblical mark of the beast.
No, it's the Business Plan of the beast.
* End the untrusted binary problem. Viruses will be blacklisted by a remote server - no more email viruses, ever
* End the trojan horse/worm problem
No. Sorry. I don't want Microsoft scanning or reading my mail. I trust them less than I do the virus writers.
Most of the problems with Windows arise from programs that Microsoft *trusts*.
Why not give me a Windows mail client that *cannot* run embedded code of *any* kind?
I can live without JavaScript in my email.
I don't need IFrames in my messages.
I can save attachments to disk before opening them - so can Joe Sixpack. Do that much and you probably don't need Palladium.
These are important features that Joe sixpack the home user really wants. Nobody likes getting a virus and losing all the information on their Hard Drive.
Joe Sixpack really doesn't matter to Microsoft. Business and Government users do. The thing that stops many business from switching to a real operating system is not the availability of commercial software, it's the dozens of little in-house-developed apps that companies use.
Very often these apps have been written by long-gone consultants who left neither the source code nor a forwarding address. So what does the company that uses these apps do? Can they arbitrarily sign the apps and let them run on Palladium-capable machines? If so, can anyone sign any bit of code and make it run? Sort of defeats the purpose, so I guess they won't be doing that...
By jaundicing themselves against the IEEE's implementation of this important standard, the Linux movement is just putting itself behind the curve in computer security.
You're missing a small point about Linux: If you have Linux, you also get the source code. If you make a change to the source and recompile it, it's no longer signed. Patching and recompiling is a necessity that they are not accounting for in this plan.
This attitude is dangerous and irresponsible on their part - Go read that story on the spread of Code Red from yesterday - Within hours of the attack, people were writing fixes and workarounds. What if none of these fixes ran, because they weren't properly signed by the original author?
Also consider the following: IIS at the time could have been signed and still been just as vulnerable. Code Red used 'Out of the Box' virgin copies of the programs as written by Microsoft and still wreaked havoc on the net. Palladium would have done little if anything to stop this.
Two points:
1.) Microsoft is offering a false sense of security.
2.) Microsoft is offering a false sense of security.
If Palladium succeeds, and Linux doesn't follow, then Linux machines will be the only computers that can get viruses. How ironic would that be?
Do you *really* believe that Linux gets so few viruses now merely because of its smaller user base? One big difference between Linux and Windows is the permission scheme - you can only do what you are allowed to do in Linux. You can't read/write/execute files where you don't have rights. Linux programs run as users - if you don't trust the program, run it under a user with few rights. It's not perfect, but better than what Microsoft is offering.
Now go to a Windows Machine (95/98/ME - others too?). Boot it. When the login screen pops up, hit escape. Hit 'start', 'run' and type 'regedit'. Change whatever you like. That is not good. Microsoft decided that a lack of security was what the user wanted, then later decided to fix this with a bunch of cobbed-on hokey 'enhancements' that do not correct the original problems. Maybe XP and 2000 fix this somewhat, but I wouldn't know - we have 4 XP laptops at my office that I spend LITERALLY an hour a day maintaining for the users. (Wireless networking problems.) No matter how good the OS is, if it doesn't do basic things for my users, it's less than useless - it's counterproductive.
Microsoft is again waving around their heavy hand and people are frightened that they are going to screw things up even more - I know that I am...
Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo
(Go ahead, mod me 'overrated' - I no longer care...)
-- My Weblog.
I've always wondered what will happen to companies that write commercial compilers and/or tutorials for writing programming code (whether it be C++, C, Basic, whatever) if Palladium becomes the standard.
Will the computer enthusiast be able to write (and thus learn) new programming languages? I find it hard to believe that a compiler could digitally sign all code, and thus it would be impossible for the average Joe to write a "Hello World."
I remember writing my first program (a blackjack game, I believe) in 4th grade in Visual Basic. Isn't that how most (if not all) computer professionals got in the business? Will self-discovery and self-learning be possible anymore?
- Recently, business sales of new CPUs have fallen off. Apparently people are running word processors just about as fast as they need to, and so it makes sense to hang onto older, "obsolete" motherboards and "outdated" OSes. This of course threatens the chip makers, since their business model depends on unconstrained growth in demand.
- If Microsoft releases Windows Palladium as advertised, then businesses will feel motivated, if not outright compelled, to buy it, since security is a growing concern. But to run Palladium, you need hardware-level encryption and signing. That means to "upgrade" to Windows Palladium, you need to buy an entire new CPU. At least one more rush of hardware purchases awaits!
- Consider these quotes:
- Giants chip in for Palladium
- Palladium: Safe or Security Flaw?
So I guess the reason that I think "hardware vendors are SO STUPID as to cripple them all in the processor" is that they've already agreed to do just that."...INDUSTRY chip giants Intel and Advanced Micro Devices have confirmed they will support Microsoft's plan to improve PC hardware and software security..."
"...Microsoft's recently announced R&D project, which includes chipmakers Intel and AMD as partners, aims to combine software and hardware extensions to traditional PC architecture..."
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
I just attended a private focus group on this subject. All the attendees were Director level IT folk who are constantly hassled by security problems. Some of them came from a management background and some from a technical background. Almost all of them thought this would be a good idea. In fact they thought it was such a good idea that they would be willing to pay $25 to $400 more per server or desktop just for the chance to have this technology.
I think this shows just how far along this idea has gone. None of these people in the room cared a wit about privacy, open source, the ability to compile your own apps, etc. because the vast majority of people don't do even know what they could be missing. All they care about is a golden pill to solve all there security problems.
So we shouldn't all be thinking that somehow this idea will be MS shooting themselves in the foot. That won't happen unless we get the word out.
Peace, or Not?
This is because when it matters, Microsoft's security is tough as nails.
I worked in construction for over 10 years, and I can tell you without hesitation that nails are not tough.
Hardened lag bolts are tough.
Glue-lams are tough.
Reinforced concrete is tough.
Nails are not tough.
Nails bend and break with surprisingly little effort, especially when pitted against things that are actually tough.
Similarly, Microsoft has been hacked a few times, and I don't mean their misconfigured products in the field -- unless that includes Windows Update and their source control servers (which were in fact hacked not too long ago and were open for some time).
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
What about internal business software? Will all businesses have to get their own internal software signed by Microsoft for use on their own machines?
What about hobbiest programmers? I don't know about you, but I got into programming at home messing around with compilers and such... Ummm... Are they trying to extend their monopoly to... programming in general?
I think it's possible that Palladium could end up being either the demise of general computing, or the demise of Microsoft's monopoly, as other competitors such as Apple, Linux, *BSD, etc, step up and offer people their COMPUTERS back to them.
I'm not going to worry. If it comes to it, I'll run Linux on PPC hardware or something. If that gets DRM infected as well, I'm sure there will be other choices, possibly from the other side of the pond. And if it's worse, I'm quitting this industry and going into construction or something. Or maybe politics, it'll get easier and easier to run on a platform of offering people their freedom back!
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Six months ago, I sent a call-to-action to Microsoft's 50,000 employees, outlining what I believe is the highest priority for the company and for our industry over the next decade: building a Trustworthy Computing environment for customers that is as reliable as the electricity that powers our homes and businesses today.
I live in California, need I say more? Not to mention the price of electricity here...
Can anyone explain how having (for example) IIS signed by Microsoft is going to make it any more secure? It's not as though there's some "untrusted" version of IIS going around that the Palladium system will be able to detect and disable, is it?
All signing can do is reassure you that you are indeed running the same binary that Microsoft (or whoever) is offering. It certainly doesn't prove that the binary is competently designed, well tested, or secure against crack attempts.
Palladium is a terrific solution for a nonexistent problem.