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LaGrande, TCPA, and Palladium
An anonymous reader writes "Intel's Paul Otellini gave a talk to developers where Intel's project called "LaGrande" was mentioned. This project is aimed to create a "safer computer environment", that would consist of an advanced TCPA implementation. Some of the features it has deal with physically "protected execution, protected memory, and protected storage". When talking on LaGrande, Otellini said "it's a core technology that things like the Microsoft Palladium initiative can take advantage of to build much more stable platforms.""
I think the sad thing is how much FUD there is about these technologies. Palladium, LaGrande, TCPA, and the like are NOT limiting technologies. All software that runs on non-Palladium systems will run on Palladium enabled hardware (like Intel's LaGrande). These technologies give developers more tools to protect data (something that is impossible without hardware support).
how little control or privacy these projects will leave us
The control still remains with the end user. By design, the user determines what is trusted and what is not trusted. And privacy is always protected, and that protection is backed by hardware.
These projects will not give us more stable software, just buggy software that will let us do less
I'm not sure where you are coming with that. Palladium will make it easier to develop secure applications- reduced complexity correlates directly with reduced bugs.
Basically, Palladium sets out to solve the problem of protecting mobile code from a malicious host (that is, it protects software from software). Without hardware support, developers must rely on obfuscation or tamper-resistant code to completely protect their code and data (something which is provably impossible to do, btw).
"The defense of freedom requires the advance of freedom" - George W Bush
They add complexity, but the slightest bug in the complex software will probably be exploitable to make encrypted data available to "normal" (e.g. non-approved-by-the-Intel-Microsoft-hegemony) programs.
Bugs in software cannot lead to protected data being divulged. The encryption key management and encryption routines themselves are implemented in hardware. The software portion of Palladium is actually pretty small, and Microsoft plans on releasing that code for public review.
And no programs are approved by Microsoft or Intel- Palladium amounts to an API that is available for ANY developer to use without any need to certify or register that software with anybody.
"The defense of freedom requires the advance of freedom" - George W Bush
Check out IBM's new ThinkPad notebooks, "now with better 'security'"!
I saw an ad on TV for one of those. Kinda made me cringe. I'm curious as to what kind of TCPA stuff it's got.
actually the only big players not into this are apple and sgi..
sun, amd amongst others are actually PARTNERS in the TCPA ALLIANCE
im quitting computing and going back to robotics or something now..
"There is hopeful symbolism in the fact that flags do NOT wave in a Vacuum " --Arthur C Clarke
No, it's named for the city of La Grande, in the northeaast corner of Oregon. Intel codenames its processors after Oregon locations (such as Klamath).
La Grande itself is a relatively pleasant community, in spite of my ex-wife making it her home.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
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