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AMI Guy Talks About TCPA, Palladium, and Other BIOS Issues
Preface:
I thought it might be handy for the audience to know who's handling their questions ...
My name is Brian Richardson. I work for American Megatrends, Inc . (AMI). AMI is a privately held company located in Norcross, GA (just north of Atlanta). We employ approximately 400 people worldwide (about 200 in the United States).
I am a "BIOS Sales Engineer", responsible for handling technical issues related to selling and marketing the AMIBIOS8 , our latest BIOS code revision. This includes writing whitepapers, demonstrating products, answering technical sales questions, speaking at industry conferences and handling requests from the press that may require more than a passing knowledge of technology (like this one).
I started at AMI in 1996. I've been in this job for two years. Before that I wrote BIOS code for our notebook team and helped design our Software Quality Automated Testing (SQuAT) system. I also maintain several company intranets and our Bugzilla server, used for tracking bugs during BIOS development.
In spare time, I serve on the board of directors of Tech Corps Georgia. I also managed the Hardware section of linux.com (old articles are archived at linux.omnipotent.net).
This interview covers BIOS in general, but the questions have a heavy slant towards TCPA & Palladium. I'm sure I won't address everybody's TCPA related questions here. AMI has a "TCPA and AMIBIOS8" whitepaper at our website which discusses AMI's implementation. There are also links to other information on TCPA.
To answer some of the more unusual questions that didn't make it into the Top 10:
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You use XOR to clear a register instead of a simple MOV instruction because of the instruction size (XOR uses a two byte opcode, MOV uses three bytes). The savings in space really adds up after a while.
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We haven't finished 1394 boot yet, but we do have USB & USB 2.0 boot support
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I don't know, I've never met Satan ... but I have been to WinHEC
Now on to the questions ...
1) On the Exclusionary Uses of TCPA
by the-banker
Is it (will it be) possible to use TCPA to effectively lock-out certain operating evironments from various services (software, media, etc) solely because the operating environment is not backed by a company, and has no mechanism for paying certification fees and licenses? Specifically, could TCPA be used against free OS's like Free/Open/netBSD and Linux to prevent those users from accessing the same content users of commercial OS's can?
Let me start out by reminding the audience I am not a security expert. I have been reading specs like a madman the past week, expecting such a question from the /. audience. I'm also not a professional TCPAadvocate ... my understanding of TCPA is in relation to what AMIBIOS must do to enable the TPM(a hardware component required by the spec). I'm going to refer toTCPA specifications & FAQ a lot, so verifying my answers will be an exercise left to the reader.
Your question brings up a lot of common issues people seem have with TCPA:
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What does TCPA do?
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What does AMIBIOS have to do with TCPA?
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What is the licensing structure?
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Can open-source software make use of TCPA?
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Does this have anything to do with Digital Rights Management (DRM)?
Let's see if Brian can hash his way through these items in some sort of order ...
a) What does TCPA do? TCPA is an industry specification that defines mechanisms for "trusted" client/server interaction ("trust" and "security" are two different things).
TCPA works in a very similar fashion as other key-based security mechanisms (SSH, PGP, SSL). Transmissions are secured by hashing against a key. Keys tend to be very long (128 bits or more), so it is difficult for "bad people" to guess your key. In many mechanisms, the key also serves to identify the user (proof that they are who they say they are). This key is often contained in a file or some sort of removable media, like a smart card.
TCPA adds a few elements to this security scheme:
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More keys and longer keys (some keys are 160 bits, most are 2048 bits)
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A crypto-processor to speed key computations
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Secure key storage on the system mainboard
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Establish platform "trust". The two excerpts below are taken from the TCPA FAQ:
12. What do you mean by trust?
The ability to feel confident that the software environment in a platform is operating as expected. This is done by reliably measuring and reliably reporting (using aliasing) information about the platform.
Another such benefit is improved control of access to data. Previously such access has depended upon authorization or authentication. Now such access can also be linked to the state of the software in the platform. This enables the denial of access to data if rogue software, such as a virus, is introduced into a platform, because such introduction necessarily changes the software state of the platform.
The crypto-processor and key storage are provided by the Trusted Platform Module (TPM). A TCPA enabled system will have a TPM on the motherboard. This TPM can be disabled, as per TCPA specification, if the user wants to opt-out.
One concern is that TCPA is equivalent to a unique identifier on your computer, which causes a large number of privacy concerns. There's a large section of the FAQ (Item #13) that covers this topic:
The solutions support privacy principles in a number of ways:
1. The owner controls personalization.
2. The owner and user control the trust relationship.
3. Provides private object storage and digital signature capability.
4. Private personalization information is never exposed.
5. User keys are encrypted prior to transmission.
6. Supports multiple certificate authorities giving the user choice.
It is also important to know what the solutions are not:
1. They are not global identifiers.
2. They are not personalized before user interaction.
3. They are not fixed functions - it can be disabled permanently.
4. They are not controlled by others (only the owner controls).
b) What does AMIBIOS have to do with TCPA? The TPM requires initialization during BIOS POST. This allows what they refer to as "metrics" to be stored that help establish that the BIOS & OS can be trusted (i.e. haven't been h4x0r3d). Our "TCPA & AMIBIOS8" whitepaper has more information.
c) What is the licensing structure? There isn't one. From the TCPA FAQ:
10. What are the licensing and/or royalty arrangements for the technologies outlined by the TCPA specification?
The TCPA spec is currently set up as a "just-publish" IP model.
d) Can open-source software make use of TCPA? Yes. From the TPM FAQ:
18. Does the TCPA support open source systems?
Yes. The ability to use the TPM functionality is available to all developers of software. An open source project could determine to use TPM functionally today. The concepts of measurement, protected storage and attestation of measurements are fundamental concepts that hold true for any type of OS or application. The platforms that support TCPA today are not limited to only one OS and if open source developers provided applications that used the TPM functionality they would find support.
Remember ... SSH, GPG and SSL aren't any less secure because they're open-source. The whole point of key-based security is that you can't see the data without the key, even if you know the decryption mechanism.
e) TCPA & DRM? This question wasn't directly asked, but it's on everybody's mind ...
TCPA has been connected to proposed legislation that would require "content protection" on most digital media devices (including PCs).
While somebody could write a DRM application using the TPM, they could also write one without it. Non-DRM applications can be developed under TCPA. The example I thought of is an improved VPN for companies that are super-paranoid about their data (think about it ... 2048 bit keys, no hash load on the system CPU, ability to tie accessibility to a unique platform).
Adding TCPA & a TPM to a system doesn't automatically add DRM to a platform. Some application has to tie the TPM to the "media" being "protected". Merely adding TCPA to AMIBIOS doesn't constitute DRM:
Captain: What happen?
Mechanic: Somebody set up us the DRM.
Cats: How are you gentlemen !! All your BIOS are belong to us.
2) Advantage
by TedCheshireAcad
What is the advantage to me, a Linux using consumer, to buying your product over those of your competitors?
First, the short answer: a proven and stable product based on nearly two decades in the PC industry, with support for the latest technology.
Now, the long answer: Let me give a little background on how BIOS gets onto your average motherboard. I know that's not what you asked, but it will explain product design and benefits to the end user.
AMI markets AMIBIOS directly to the motherboard manufacturer, who we see as the actual "BIOS customer". So many of our features are oriented to motherboard manufacturers or BIOS developer. The end result of using our codebase is to produce a stable BIOS for the motherboard manufacturer's customer (that's you, the end user).
You can break these down three major areas:
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Code structure (ease of development, tools, source management, etc.)
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Technology support (OS, chipsets, processors, peripherals, etc.)
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Support after the sale
a) The "BIOS core" is a different code component from silicon support code. The same applies to our technology support modules (ACPI,USB, TCPA, ASF, SMBIOS, APM, etc.). This allows board developers to pick just the code they need for their system. An embedded Linux board for an industrial controller has different BIOS requirements than the typical "white box" motherboard (OS compatibility, supported hardware, power management, etc.).
AMI also developed a custom GUI to make BIOS development easier (Visual eBIOS, or VeB). Believe it or not, most BIOS development happens at the DOS prompt in x86 assembly code. We found it harder to get new engineers comfortable with DOS-based development (DOS is 22 years old, so is the average college graduate). VeB also incorporates source control, so engineers manage the code from the same place they edit the code.
b) Technology support is pretty broad. We have to work on new chipsets, technologies and devices while keeping backwards compatibility for older hardware we'd rather forget about. This involves a lot of work with hardware vendors (Intel, AMD, ServerWorks, nVIDIA, etc.), software companies (Microsoft, RedHat, etc.) and technical specification groups (there's one for most every acronym out there). As you might imagine, there's a lot of testing to make sure all these things play well together.
Technology support also applies to features that don't have cool three letter acronyms. One example of this is "Fast POST" (POST is Power On Self Test, BIOS execution from power-on to OS bootloader). There was customer demand to boot the PC faster. This pressure came from Microsoft for a better overall user experience (yes, the obvious joke is "boot speed doesn't matter when you don't have to reboot so often" ... but I'm taking the high road). So now Fast POST is standard in AMIBIOS8.
c) "Service after the sale" sounds like something you hear in a men's clothing store, but it applies to BIOS as well. Customers expect bugs to be fixed, new features to be added, and a voice on the phone when they can't quite figure out which bit goes where. Some customers develop using our source code (as a licensee), while others use our engineers to create their BIOS (as contractors).
That might have been more of a sales pitch than you were expecting (sorry). There's more product information at the AMIBIOS website.
3) Performance hit
by oliverthered
I assume that data pathways will be signable or encrypted in some way. What performance hit will the [operating system] take when using trusted system? e.g. How much extra data is added to form a signature, what methods are used for signing. and how will this benefit the end-user?
A: I assume this is in reference to TCPA, so I'll use what I know of that spec to answer the question.
Everybody who's used SSH or SCP has experienced computation overhead from data encryption. That's the main reason TCPA has the Trusted Platform Module (TPM). Along with storing keys, it had a dedicated crypto-processor to handle random number generation, hashing and digital signatures. Due to the size of a security key, these hash computations add overhead (overhead == delay).
In TCPA, the hash/generation stuff is offloaded to the TPM. Since this dedicated processor does the work, the main system processor doesn't have to. The TPM is also a function specific processor, meaning it's optimized for security tasks (translation: faster than your general purpose x86 CPU). This is a good thing, since most of the TPM keys are 2048 bits.
If you look at Transmeta's recent security press release, you see the same functionality. Although this story was reported as Transmeta releasing DRM, they are actually providing an integrated crypto-processor in the TM5800. This function-specific processor is accessible through an extension to the x86 instruction set (similar to MMX or 3DNow!). The difference between this & the TPM is how you access the functions.
Sidenote: does any open-source developer want to check if these extensions could be used to improve SSH, SCP or GPG performance?
The signing methods and potential benefits are outlined in the TCPA specification and FAQ.
4) Why are BIOSes closed source?
by mcelrath
Having recently had a lot of trouble with my laptop's BIOS, on an issue that I could most certainly fix if I had access to the code... I started wondering what benefit AMI and other vendors have by keeping BIOS code secret? I can think of none whatsoever.
An open-source TCPA BIOS might go a long way to alleviating the fears of the open source community, since we could see exactly what it is you're forcing on us. And hey, no doubt you'd get a few bug-fixing patches in return for your efforts.
So, is an open-source BIOS a possibility? (TCPA or otherwise)
Just to get this out of the way:
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AMI isn't forcing anybody to take any product offering, TCPA or otherwise.
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TCPA doesn't block open-source (see #18 in the TPM FAQ @ trustedpc.org).
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The TPM Memory Present (MP) driver BIOS uses during POST isn't open-source (it's provided by the TPM manufacturer).
This was the focus of a linux.com article several years back. There's plenty of advantages to open-source, but there are two main reasons for closed source BIOS: Legal Restrictions & Economics.
The creation of an open-source BIOS isn't limited by the BIOS itself, but by the information required to create the BIOS. Let me take a second and explain how the BIOS works at a programming level. This may seem like a tangent, but it helps explain issues faced by open-source BIOS developers (just think of it as Good Eats for BIOS).
There's three major components of any BIOS:
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Core Routines
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Silicon Support Routines
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Board Specific Routines
The core can be equated to the kernel of an operating system, except that it comprises a larger percentage of the codebase (both in functionality and actual code size). This is everything that's generic from one BIOS to the next.
Silicon Support applies to the chips on the board initialized by the BIOS (processor, northbridge, southbridge, I/O, flash). BIOS core routines will call silicon routines when hardware configuration is required. These routines are created according to an API, so swapping any of these code modules doesn't affect the structure of the core.
Board Specific Routines represent the motherboard manufacturer's configuration. If you look at motherboards from two manufacturers that use the exact same silicon components, you might expect the BIOS from one board to work on the other ... but you'd be wrong. The small hardware changes that differentiate Board Vendor A from Board Vendor B have a large impact on the BIOS. PCI Interrupt routing, chipset General Purpose I/O pins and other parts of vendor's "secret sauce" go into this BIOS layer.
"Fine," you say, "but what does this have to do with open-source BIOS?"
I'm sure you've noticed that there's a BIOS ready for a chipset the day it is announced. AMI and other BIOS companies don't just come along the day of the silicon release and slap a BIOS together. We work hand-in-hand with the chipset vendor for months before the release. They send us an alpha board, we boot it ... they send us a beta board, we add more features ... they send us final silicon, we validate it.
Now remember that this hardware isn't public when AMI gets it. AMI has to sign a has to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) to get a development board or advance specifications, which means we can't tell anybody what we know about the product. Vendor-supplied reference code (memory detection, bridge configuration, etc.) is also covered under NDA. AMI also signs NDAs to cover the motherboard manufacturer's confidential information.
So the BIOS that ends up on those motherboards is constructed using information we can't release to any party not covered by NDA. You might be able to understand how this doesn't fit into to the open-source model.
So an open-source BIOS developer has a big dilemma ... they need access to information, but legally can't include it in open-source code. Many chipset vendors provide information after their chipset is released, but not many board vendors hand out schematics. Reverse engineering might reveal this information, but some items controlled by the BIOS can damage the system if not set properly (data corruption, overheating, smoke, flame, etc.) ... so random bit flipping may not be the answer. And nobody wants to get into the legal issues of using disassembled code in place of reverse engineering.
I think the closing statement from the linux.com LinuxBIOS article still applies ... "The real question isn't if an open source BIOS will ever work on a handful of platforms, but if it will ever become viable for mass market across many platforms."
There's another issue that comes into keeping AMIBIOS source code closed (or for that matter anycommercial source code). This has to do with economics.
This is where I change hats from "AMI company representative" to "average techno-Joe". The next few paragraphs are my feelings, not necessarily those of my employer or anybody else on the planet.
I personally like the idea of open-source, and I use a lot of open-source programs at home and work (Mozilla, OpenOffice, RedHat, Mandrake, ClarkConnect, PostNuke, perl, php, Bugzilla). But I also buy and use regular closed-source programs (my DV editing and VCD/DVD authoring tools). The choice isn't whether or not the source is accessible, but if the tool fits my needs.
In either case, those programs are the product of somebody's time (in most cases, a large group of bodies). They're a conglomeration of people's ideas, a manifestation of their talents, and monetary investment (open-source isn't free to develop, somebody bought that computer hardware). Those people, and whatever company funded their efforts, have the choice to distribute their product anyway they choose.
If a company wants to go open-source, then they can't make money selling source or seat licenses. RedHat doesn't make money selling code, they make money selling a code package and support for that package. My company doesn't operate that way ... in the realm of BIOS, money is made licensing source and selling per-board licenses. That's the way every BIOS vendor makes money.
That doesn't mean there's no open-source within AMI (perl/php/PostNuke/apache intranets, Bugzilla bug tracking, ucLinux on our MegaRAC G2 management card). But the choice to go open-source is done product by product, company by company.
In an industry driven by innovation, many companies feel they loose competitive advantage by opening their source ... if everybody has access to their ideas, then why buy their product over another? That mentality may not fit well with open-source, but these inexpensive computers we currently enjoy are the product of market forces. If there was no profit in computing, would Intel and AMD even exist?
Thus ends my personal views ... back to the actual interview ...
5) Technical Explanation of BIOS Settings
by doppleganger871
I have been doing research on BIOS settings for many years, and I have found good articles on what the settings do, and how to tweak them for the best performance/stability mix. But, I would like to know if the BIOS manufacturer itself would be able to provide an in-depth manual of all the BIOS settings, and what exactly they do. All the manuals that come with motherboards are very short on explanations, and I would like to see someone within the company actually explain to us hardware enthusiasts the down 'n dirty, nitty gritty, dirt under the rug, needle in a haystack type of information that we could use to make our computers run the absolute best they can. Because, as we all know, optimizing software and firmware is a lot cheaper than upgrading parts.
A: I wish I had a great answer for this. Despite my verbose nature, there's not enough room in this interview to discuss every setting that is or will be in the BIOS. Some of the basic settings are covered in BIOS setup manuals, and a few websites do a good job of explain the ugly details. The problem is that those "cryptic" options change for every chipset on the market.
We're always looking at product improvements, and that includes documentation. Our setup manual is a generic template, designed for the motherboard customer as a starting point for their manuals. The "chipset specific setup information" is part of a new documentation effort within AMI (we talked about in meetings this week).
Outside of that, optimizing settings for a specific combination of board, memory and processor is still trial and error (tweak, reboot, benchmark, swear ... tweak, reboot, benchmark, swear ...). I don't know if better documentation will change that.
6) "Trusted" computer
by michael
A few related questions:
a) Isn't the goal of "trusted computing" to allow entities other than the owner of the computer to control what the owner does with his/her hardware? For example, "trusted computing" applied to music implies that the music publisher gains control over what the computer owner can do with the music data files. Isn't this the exact opposite of "trust" as that word is normally used - a trusted computer is one that can't be trusted by the computer's owner to perform the tasks asked of it, because other entities have veto power over the computer's actions?
b) Companies like AMI have repeatedly claimed that they aren't part of Palladium. However, isn't it true that without AMI's trusted BIOS (and all the other components necessary to build a "trusted computer"), Palladium wouldn't work? Why does AMI think they shouldn't be held responsible for enabling Palladium and similar schemes?
c) In what way does AMI benefit, financially or otherwise, from introducing a BIOS designed to make the computer it is installed in less useful to the purchaser of the computer? Please avoid saying that this is "optional"; AMI wouldn't create this BIOS if it wasn't intended to be used.
A: Let's take these in order ...
a) The Goal Of Trusted Computing: Despite the fact my company is a TCPA member company, the concept of trusted computing wasn't created by AMI (we're not even a founding member).
As far as the goals of the specification, I'm not the designated defender of TCPA. I'll let theTCPA speak to their own goals. You seem to automatically equate "trust" to DRM, but that's not what I get from reading the specifications and related materials (see part (e) of my answer to the first question).
b) Palladium & AMIBIOS: You are correct in understanding that Palladium will require some amount of BIOS support. The reason we keep saying "we're not a part of Palladium" is because Palladium doesn't exist in the marketplace ... it's a Microsoft initiative being developed under guarded care in a small circle of developers. It's not a public specification like TCPA, so our role in this scheme is unknown. My understanding is that we'll get a specification from Microsoft whenever they're ready to involve the BIOS developers, but I don't know under what terms it will be made public (my Magic 8 Ball says "Ask Again Later").
c) Financial Benefit: Yes, there is a financial benefit to supporting a technology that our customers ask for ... they continue to be our customers. Not every customer has asked for TCPA yet, but enough large customers have asked to make it financially reasonable. Keep in mind that this is just one more feature we offer, which the customer may or may not want to take.
So when a customer (or customers) comes to AMI and says "Our next motherboard will support TCPA, and we need a BIOS module", AMI has two choices:
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Say yes, develop the code, make the customer happy
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Say no
If we select option #2 (for whatever reason), our customer has one of two responses:
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"No problem, we licensed your code ... we'll add the support ourselves."
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"Too bad, you have a competitor who offers this support ... it was nice doing business with you."
Option B is an obvious downer, because customers give us money. Money can be exchanged for goods and services, like food ... and I find food to be an important part of a nutritious breakfast.
Option A presents another series of problems. Yes, we kept the customer, but now we have a forked version of our code floating around. If only one customer wants this feature, then it's not a big deal. If twenty customers want this feature, then there's twenty code forks. They're still our customers, so they expect support ... and this is a support nightmare.
Our decision to develop a TCPA option was driven by sufficient demand for the technology. We're not the only company in the marketplace offering TCPA. Phoenix, our largest competitor, has been working on TCPA for quite sometime. IBM is already shipping notebooks with TPM hardware (which run Linux, according to LinuxCare Labs). If AMI customers don't ship TCPA, they we spent time developing a feature nobody wanted (it wouldn't be the first time, but that's happens in cutting edge development), but we have customer goodwill because we're responsive to their needs. It's the same in our eyes as developing support for a chipset ... if nobody likes the chipset, then they don't buy the code to support it.
What we have done by choosing TCPA over any number of proprietary security solutions is present an option that isn't closed to third parties. If we enable TCPA on a board and you want to make use of it, read the spec and develop accordingly.
7) Hardware vendors
by cybermace5
Since a BIOS is only part of a motherboard: what steps will hardware vendors have to take, in order to incorporate your BIOS? Will they have to adhere to certain hardware design rules or controls in order to maintain the TCPA? Is there going to be a licensing procedure for hardware manufacturers?
A: Hardware vendors don't have to do much for AMIBIOS to support TCPA. The TCPA code module gets included as an add-on. The hardware manufacturer has to obtain a TPM to place on the motherboard, but that's available from a third party vendor.
The TCPA specification doesn't mandate licensing (see point #10 in the TCPA FAQ). It's not an AMI specification, so it's not our job to check for compliance. Third-party labs will most likely perform platform certification based on TCPA specifications.
8) Windows override
by Forkenhoppen
I have a question; on previous occassions on VIA hardware I've owned, I've noticed that occasionally, Windows will enable a feature even though I have turned it off in the BIOS.
My question is this; if I have TCPA disabled in my BIOS, will Windows drivers abide by this? Or will they still be able to use aspects of the BIOS originally put in place for use by TCPA even though I have it shut off?
What plans are in place to keep a Windows driver from hijacking TCPA-related information for it's own purposes?
A: A lot of that depends on how the motherboard vendor implements the TPM disable option mandated by the TCPA specification.
The TCPA specification has many options for disabling the TPM. It can be a BIOS setup question, jumper or software driven. The first two would be really hard to override in software (unless there's a robotic hand attached to the USB port). The third option could present a software override, but you would have to reboot to have the TPM enabled at power-on to set proper "root of trust" (you can't just turn it on midstream, since a TCPA system is supposed to hash the BIOS & bootloader).
9) TCPA & Palladium
by ignipotentis
Perhaps you can clarify the differences between the two (TCPA & Palladium). After reading up on both of them, i still find that they seem to be pretty much the same, just marketed differently.
A: From the information that's been made public concerning Palladium, I can try to elaborate on this. As I understand it, the major differences are listed below:
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Curtain Memory
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Control of Specification
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Intellectual Property (IP) Rights
The last two points are pretty self explanatory. Palladium it not a public specification, there may be licensing issues. TCPA is a public document created and reviewed by a number of different companies, with no licensing demands.
The first point is technical in nature. Here's how the Microsoft's Palladium FAQ describes "curtain memory":
The ability to wall off and hide pages of main memory so that each "Palladium" application can be assured that it is not modified or observed by any other application or even the operating system
This type of mechanism doesn't exist in TCPA, and would probably require some sort of support at the chipset level (which means it couldn't be implemented using current northbridge hardware). The total system impact isn't known, and it's any body's guess what this does to application development.
10) What do you think about Linux BIOS?
by lanner
At first, I was going to ask you about how you have cooperated, if at all, with the Linux BIOS project. After all, you often have historically cooperated with Microsoft and Novell. What are you doing to help Linux?
But then it occurred to me, if Linux BIOS was successful, it would put AMI out of the BIOS software development business. Linux BIOS is a competitor of AMI.
What is your personal perspective about Linux BIOS, and what does AMI think about it?
A: There's a lot of overlap with question #4 here. But there are two points I'd like to touch on:
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Cooperation with Microsoft, Novell & Linux
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Perspective on LinuxBIOS
a) Saying that we "cooperate" with Microsoft and Novell is misleading. AMI creates AMIBIOS for maximum hardware and software compatibility. For years, Microsoft and Novell were the primary OS vendors used by our customers. Microsoft also drives many PC specifications, and the majority of our customers use Microsoft operating systems. Development and testing are focused based on customer demand.
In the past few years, that situation has changed. Novell isn't a major consideration for our customers, but we still test compatibility. Linux is demanded by more customers, and our testing efforts have been increased to match that demand. We test RedHat, SuSe, Mandrake, Xandros, Lindows and FreeBSD by default (along with various beta distros).
Microsoft is still key to our testing and development (we test everything back to Win98). Customers still need that "Designed for Windows" sticker. But Linux is a major focus in our testing and development ... not just because we develop for compatibility, but because our customers ask for it by name.
b) In some areas, people see LinuxBIOS as competition to the other BIOS vendors.
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As far as the source licensing (open vs. closed), see my answer to question #4.
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In features, LinuxBIOS does some things that our BIOS doesn't (mostly in the areas of cluster management) ... AMI has advantages over LinuxBIOS as well (boot from USB/USB2, JPEG graphics as boot logo, broader chipset support, ACPI/APM power management, etc.).
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LinuxBIOS was developed for a specific application, but has broadened ... AMIBIOS aims to offer broad support in many market segments.
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AMIBIOS has been tested against a larger number of system configurations, works with a larger variety of hardware, and has a longer product history.
I'm not sure how others at AMI feel about LinuxBIOS, but all I have to say is "go for it". There's some neat stuff coming out of that project, and it's interesting to see what they've accomplished. Competition in the market is what makes technology improve ... one notch better than the last thing, one step ahead of the next guy.
Thus ends the interview. Thanks to Slashdot for the opportunity, and thanks to the readers for wading through the text.
Good to see michael modded himself into the question bin (see question #6)...
Wow I would have never guessed! So I guess all that Anti-MS/Pro-Linux stuff isn't PR.
Just because Microsoft are involved doesn't have to make something bad.
Thay may make it more interesting.
Karma: Bad due to google bombing - Robert Watkins woz 'ere.
It was a stupid question. You are not an AMI customer.
Their customers are motherboard vendors, not end users. Ask the mobo manufacturers or the dells and compaqs. They provided support for TPM because their customers asked for it. It's up to the mobo vendors to decide how to use it, if at all.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I have access to all of Stephen King's ideas, since he publishes them in an easy-to-read and often easy-to-carry format, and yet when it comes to book writing he has a considerable advantage over me.
Ryan T. Sammartino
"Ancora imparo"
I dont want to say I feel better about TCPA now but I know better now where to focus the fear. It seems that what needs to happen is the open source community needs to quickly jump on TCPA and make it worthwhile for doing REALLY cool things, long before someone else turns it into something that makes me unplug.
The ultimate network admin tool needs HELP!
Encrypting data prior to writing it to the hard drive in order to avoid putting yourself at risk of disclosing private data would be an excellent benefit.
hmm... Well he didn't answer the question, more avioded it.
Any extra header data will have to travel around the system bus reducing bandwith.
Any processing overhead will introduce latency, not a nice thing to have kicking around.
So it may not affect the CPU in terms of processing overhead but there's an overall systems performance hit.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
I think it is a bit silly to say, "Someone would have to write software to tie our bios initiatives to DRM," as if such a probability is extremely remote.
I think the correct answer might have been:
"If we weren't including and supporting these bios initiatives, there'd be nothing in our bios anyone could tie to a DRM software inititiative."
The problem here is that even though it can be disabled by the end user, and can't be software-enabled through the OS on the fly, the mere inclusion of it as a standard feature in a bios will encourage the DRM software author to say: "If you don't enable your bios control, you won't get any standard functionality out of our software." The mere fact that it is in the bios will be enough to spur software development in that direction.
The bright side to this is that it's all still years into the future--there are hundreds of millions of machines in use world wide which don't have any such bios capabilities and which aren't going to be discarded any time soon. And of course current machines being sold right now do not have it.
The question is will there be a market for this sort of thing? If implementers could guarantee me that using it means I can safely shut out Microsoft or any other company from doing *anything* (via the Internet) in my system without my express advance permission [and I don't mean EULA licensing--I mean per-occurrence notification as it happens]--well, even I might be interested at that point.
But the DRM initiative by private companies and the "privacy issue" for me seem entirely at cross purposes, and frankly I'm getting a little tired of hearing that these initiatives are promising that they can allow companies to inspect my system and control my software in the name of DRM, but at the same time will use the same technology to guarantee my privacy. I can't see how the two mix.
Yet, I do not feel very confident, after reading how he tries to avoid question concerning the newspeak on what "trust" is supposed to mean. OK, so any technology can be used for good and bad, that is clear.
It is my firm belief that technologists have a great responsibility for the things that they make, because no one is better suited to understand the consequences of the tech that they develop than the techie himself.
So, just referring to TCPA and what they say, what their goals are, and so on, it doesn't cut it. Brian has a moral duty to try to understand what motives drive the stuff that he is doing, and if he thinks that these motives are bad, he has a moral duty to speak up about it.
I really haven't seen anything non-fuzzy from TCPA about what their real motives are, but one thing I know: If the real goal is to take away the control of the technology each individual uses away from the individiual, it will be the most drastic step towards an authoritarian society.
Few are better suited than Brian to examine these issues, and with that comes a huge responsibility to make sure that the technology he is developing does not move society in that direction.
After reading this interview, I do not feel confident that Brian takes this responsibility seriously enough.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
I'm excited to see the end product. Cryptographic processors on all motherboards sounds to me like a great idea. I wonder how hard it will/would be to change the keys though... I hope they aren't hard-wired. Palladium is just another reason to not run windows, but TCPA could theoretically be disabled, and you can run Linux.
The only way this will improve DRM is by allowing stronger encryption of data. 2048 bit encryption will be tough to break, and with these chips in DVD players, strong encryption will be possible even for small devices. The media companies will always have the problem of "It has to get in my brain somehow, and if it does, I could store what I see with good enough technology." Because your brain doesn't have DRM, they can never really lock out illegal copying. It has to be in a human understandable format at some point in order for it to have value. The more they fight the inevitable, the sooner an illegal trust/monopoly will be out of business. Art will continue. It probably won't pay the ludicrous amounts that it does now, but it will survive as it always has.
Karma Clown
The thrust of half those questions was: "TCPA seems to provide benefit only to those who wish to tell me what I can and cannot do with my computer. Is this true? If not, what's in it for me? If it is true, how can you sleep at night?"
I think Michael's questions were most on-point, and what I most wondered myself (there, I said something nice about him
If I sound harsh it's because I'm pissed. The goal of TCPA is transparent, and Brian The AMI Guy is either trying to pull the wool over our eyes or incompetent. Given that he used to hack this stuff for a living, and now has "Sales" in his title, I'd suggest the former.
Big Media nad Big Software are chortling in glee as they see their plans for "Trusted Computing" coming to fruition. The MPAA wants to turn your computer into a TV, and AMI is only to happy to help.
This isn't as much "normalization" as it is "don't take so many drugs when you're designing tables."
you would have to reboot to have the TPM enabled at power-on to set proper "root of trust" (you can't just turn it on midstream, since a TCPA system is supposed to hash the BIOS & bootloader).
If this is true, then how do we get our free bootloader (lilo?) to work? Will (insert free bootloader here) have to switch to binary only releases, and pass every one through a certificate authority?
I have a gut-wrenching feeling that either we aren't hearing the whole story, or this guy is oblivious to the larger strategies at work here...
No, it's not. On paper, it appears to be a feature. Get a BIOS pre-palladium. List features and count. For exmaple, lets say 110 "features". Now add palladium to that same chip. We now count 111 features. Again, on paper it looks good. But in the real world, where we live and where the chip will run, it's bullshit.
That 1 "feature" will reduce a very important part of my computing usage. "Freedom" and "choice" and "control" el. at. It's a net-negative. You added 1 "feature" on paper but reduced my "LIBERTY" as the user.
If Ford were to advertise "New Options! All cars CAN have a STEARING WHEEL and an ENGINE if you like!" they would be shut down. But in the digital world, AMI et. al. calls this type of selling a "feature". No thank you.
The Trusted Computing Alliance is still annoyingly cloak-and-dagger, but this does clarify things a bit. (It's a shame more of the questions asked didn't take into account that TCPA obviously != Palladium, though TCPA -> Palladium.)
;)]
My thoughts here-
-Crypto offloading is great, if done properly. Question is, will it be self-perpetuating, or will the initial implementation be light-years ahead of general-purpose processing, but various issues bog down R&D and spec-updating until 'brute force' CPUs once again mop the floor with the specialized units?
-As we probably knew in the back of our heads, TCPA is just a 'technology,' like SSH, or more accurately, SNMP/WoL/other remote-management solutions. What would make things evil would be:
-TCPA-only hardware/systems models, roughly equivalent to Winmodems or anything else built under the assumption of proprietary licensing (of OSes, keys, etc). The real risk here doesn't sound like "Linux/BSD won't boot;" it sounds more like "Linux/BSD won't be able to boot 'Trusted' so you can't put that SAMBA server on your Windows network."
-In fact, let me repeat that. "Linux/BSD won't boot trusted, so you can't put that SAMBA server on your Windows network." This is why MS gives a hoot, and while TCPA itself might not be an idea with [good|evil] alignment, beware of influence to the spec. Network filesystems are a good idea; CIFS is an example of a good idea manipulated for lock-in.
-As to Palladium... first off, it's sounding more and more like another lovely exploitable mechanism. If, somehow, Gator or friends can inject code into the Palladium box, they get free reign and undetectability. Heck, imagine if worms could take advantage... [I'm not feeling up to speed on the spec today, so I may be ignoring how code gets into the Palladium box in the first place. Still, it's long been proven there's more than one way to skin a horse- Microsoft signatures aren't necessarily from Microsoft and all that.
-...secondly, it sounds like the full Palladium vision (in the sense of MS revoking the 'license' to your Word documents and so forth) is going to be an *application* of TCPA and other protocols, in the same way BackOrifice is an application of TCP/IP networking.
-Finally, as far as I can tell, most jumpers in this day and age simply set registers read by the BIOS at boot, so unless these are physically cutting power/pathways to various chips, I can't see why the TCPA processor can't be enabled later. After all, there've long been hacks like SoftFSB and similar. Whether that'd have actual utility is anyone's guess... The potential to curtain some memory in Palladium-ready chips based on an exploit's request sounds more disturbing.
I'm going to address something Brian said from the perspective of a motherboard designer, because that is what my recent job was.
Brian says "So when a customer (or customers) comes to AMI and says "Our next motherboard will support TCPA, and we need a BIOS module", AMI has two choices:"
This really is the key. AMI doesn't sell their BIOS to "Linux Users", nor do they sell it to any other end users. AMI's customers are the companies that either design or specify designs for motherboards (think Dell, IBM, HP, Intel, Tyan, etc.) AMI simply can't say "no" to these customers, as they will simply go somewhere else. Or, as he pointed out, since the motherboard designer usually has a license for the code, they can just have their own programmers put in the offending feature.
The next question you have to ask yourself is why are the motherboard designers pushing for this feature? Extending Brian's argument, it is because their customers are system integrators and the system integrators are demanding it. In the case of Dell or HP, the system integrator is just another group in the same company, in the case of Tyan it is another company altogether, but the case is the same either way.
So why are the system integrators demanding it? The simple answer is, Microsoft doesn't give you any choice. No PC maker can be competitive without that little "Designed for Windows 2004" sticker on the front of their box. Our contracts with Microsoft give us a big discount on Windows licenses if we meet their demands, and one of those demands is that the hardware platform we ship meet all the requirements of a MS/Intel driven design guide.
Ever notice that all computers now ship with a network port? Ever notice that no computers ship today with ISA slots? Ever wonder why? Because those are the demands that MS makes, and the costs of failing to meet their demands are so high that the PC makers really have no choice.
Don't get upset with AMI for enabling Palladium. They really have no choice. If you want to find out who you should be upset with, just follow the money and see where it leads.
Speed is a non-issue in this particular comparison. When the instructions are being fetched 32 or 64 bits at a time and with parallel execution units and other advanced CPU features, there is little or no intrinsic or predictable speed difference between 1, 2, 3 or 4 byte instructions that all perform the same desired function.
In programming the x86 family in assembler, I stopped counting machine cycles starting with the '386.
Can anyone tell me what happens to materials I have purchased on PC #1 when I upgrade to PC #2. IS it just me, or does it seem that there should be legislation guaranteeing this ability. If there isn't this is going to be the biggest rip-off for consumers in history. When you purchase DRM content, not only will you not be able to play it on more than one electronic device, but you will lose the ability to use it at all when you upgrade computer or switch mobos or if your mobo goes bad.
Or is there some mechanism to avoid this?
They didn't need to. Linux doesn't need hardware help to be secure. A properly configured Windows box (newer versions) doesn't need it either.
You seem to think that security is an absolute thing, rather than a never-ending qualitive bit.
Linux is not magically secure--it and windows can be improved through all manner of devices and programs, and this will be so for a long, long time.
He asked me why to buy AMI over a competitor ... that's what I answered. That's what I do for a living, so I had an answer.
If he wanted to ask about something else, he should have asked a different question.
Brian Richardson - AMI
Understood - this isn't personal, just a few points which I though were unclear or misstated.
I would assume that the 128 and 160-bit keys are keys for some symmetric cipher, and the 2048 bit keys are RSA keys. It is wrong to suggest that key length correlates to strength without taking the algorithm into account, and even then practicality limits the usefulness of longer and longer keys. 128 bits is probably safe enough, and though I'd be happy to use a 160 or 256 bit key in a symmetric cipher, longer than that gets silly: at 128 bits you're already never going to see the key brute forced.
The benefits of 2048 bit RSA keys come not from strength through length, but from the fact that they belong to a different class of algorithm, which allows you to do very different things with them.
I have yet to be convinced that this is true of data in the general sense and malware. All real world software contains bugs, some of which can be exploited to subvert the system. No amount of hardware trickery can stop this being true, the best you can hope for is to contain the spread of corruption by compartmentalizing the system. If you only have one compartment, or only one compartment you really care about, which I suspect will be the case for the majority of systems, then containing malicious code to that compartment provides little benefit. Even if you care about other compartments, the premise of containment assumes no bugs in the boundaries between neighbouring compartments.
In all likelihood you can make things prohibitively difficult for individuals to do something against the policy of the creator of the platform/application, even with their own property, but you can't make the guarantee that the platform is immune from malware.
This is not necessarily useful. Anyone may well be able to implement TCPA features, just as anyone can implement an SSH client. Without access to the necessary keys, you can still be prevented from accessing particular data or functionality, just as your own SSH client won't allow you to login to any extra servers. With open access to the keys, you've lost any security guarantees that rested on them. This makes the exercise somewhat pointless in many cases.
DRM without hardware support can never be secure. At some point the data being protected has to be decrypted, and since the DRM implementation doesn't have the secure platform guarantee the TPM provides, it can't be sure there isn't something out there waiting to extract the data. It's even relatively easy to directly subvert the software, but subverting secure hardware is very much more difficult. This is significant because the R in DRM is not directly tied to law - it can be used to enforce policy that extends beyond the data owner's rights, by restricting rights that the end user does have.
This can of course be done without TCPA. You could easily push the crypto into the NIC. nCipher make a variety of crypto hardware accelerators for networking, storage and other uses, which don't impact the architecture of the whole of the rest of the system.
This is my World Wide Web of Whatever
Oh come on. Let's face reality: the fact of the matter is that your (proprietary) software hasn't trusted you for a while now. What exactly do CD keys and registration requirements indicate if not a complete distrust of the end user's good intentions?
Take the recent story on Quicken's Turbo Tax program, where Quicken removed your option to print returns on a computer other than the one the software was originally activated on. Do you think maybe Quicken did this because they don't trust you?
Another example off the top of my head are those annoying product activations the new Microsoft Office products require. Why would Microsoft do this if they trusted their customers? Hint: they wouldn't.
If you honestly believe any major software company trusts you to protect their own interests when your convenience or money is on the line, you are quite deluded. Management at these companies is only going to trust you insofar as this aligns with their long term strategic interests. Once this is no longer the case they will do everything in their power to make sure the untrusted end user cannot impact those interests, even if it makes their software substantially less useful to you.
Bottom line: software companies do not trust you. They have no reason to, and therefore should not be expected to. Adding TCPA does not change this reality; they will still not trust you. But they'll be more comfortable dealing with you because your potentially damaging actions are verifiably constrained by their software.
Don't like this? Buy/support/use software that does not constrain you. That's your option. Boycotting AMI or TCPA-enabled motherboards does not solve the problem; those manufacturers are responding to a demand from software developers and content owners. It is up to you to show those people that you do not want to be curtailed and restricted and denied at every juncture.
They didn't need to. Linux doesn't need hardware help to be secure.
You are so wrong. Linux can do nothing if I've got a rogue PCI card or USB device installed. Linux can do nothing if I've got an ICE on the processor. Windows, OS/2, Mac, nobody can. It's beyond the scope of the OS' current capabilities, and it has no way of assuring itself within reasonable doubt that whatever it's talking to has not been tampered.
TCPA is all about that level of security. I can write TCPA-enhanced drivers which will validate that the PCI card I'm talking to hasn't been tampered from its original spec, almost right up to the output DACs or input ADCs. (I can still tap off any analog output or feed funky values to any analog input, but that's not a problem for most people designing this TCPA and Palladium stuff.)
Oh, I think Brian's answers were very truthful...have no complaints about his forthrightness.
But you have to admit the logic in all of this gets a little tangled...if it's as unrelated as you say, then why would any software maker think of writing a DRM application that uses TCPA? Apparently Brian thinks it would be possible to integrate if not suborn TCPA into a DRM software application. The idea, as well as its feasibility, has occurred to him and apparently he's concluded that the two are not so dissimilar as to rule out someone writing such a DRM software application. If he thought that I think he would have said so.
I think you missed my point--if TCPA isn't in a bios, and Palladium chips aren't on motherboards--then obviously nobody's going to write software that integrates either one or requires either one, as is currently the case today.
As far as TCPA goes I'm interested in what is meant by an "authenticated" boot. IMO, this could conceivably have several meanings and not strictly refer to the unspoiled state of the kernel.
It's surprising to me, but as detail oriented as you have to be to get things done in this industry, I've friends and acquaintances who really have trouble seeing connections and subtleties that to me, anyway, seem quite obvious. This is like a Pandora's box of sorts because what you start with, regardless of how inoffensive it may seem, and what you end up are likely to be very different things.
(Microsoft has, however, continued DRM support in WMP9, I note, and the fact that WinXP Product Activation is not popular has not dissuaded Microsoft's continued use of it--which they have now spread to a program as innocuous as Plus!. But that's really not the point here....)
You make a very good point, which perhaps you ought to consider a bit more--like you say, DRM is currently possible on existing hardware--just as is SSL (which I think seems to work pretty darn well.) Something like SSL does *not require* DRM or Palladium to function properly.
So whence cometh the need for Palladium, TCPA, and DRM...? (DRM is the obvious one, of course.) IMHO, the others will be used as system foundations for more "advanced" (more invasive) DRM software technology.
I used to laugh at the notions people had when they said that Microsoft wanted to take over the world. In fact, I still find it pretty darn funny. However, with Microsoft pushing technologies like these I do think Microsoft wants to take over my desktop--and yours--and everyone else's. I don't find that to be outlandish at all. Microsoft is pushing to be the traffic cop on my machine and seeking to install software and firmware initiatives so that Microsoft, not me, decides what and when I can run something on my computer. The problem with the whole Digital Rights initiative is that my Constitutional right to the ownership of private property (which I consider my computers to be as well as the software that resides on them) is usurped in favor of the *imagined rights* of corporations to invade my privacy to "help me" remain honest.
So why does an end user "need" TCPA or DRM or Palladium?
Its been my experience that REAL engineers don't exist. Rather they are born. People who go to college, and THEN start to engineer stuff, become engineers. People who freelance engineer stuff, are NOT considered engineers. Engineers are meerly egotistical, degree driven people with little-to-no world experience with the products that they "engineer". Products made from companies with REAL WORLD engineers, are always higher quality and don't fail. Don't get me wrong, every corporation has its share of DECENT degree empowered engineers. Majority rules, however, giving the idiots all of the power. I've worked in a few engineering departments at a LOT of large corporations over the years. What I have said is true at all of them. I doubt its isolated to my opinion. ---_WHEW_--- Glad I got that out there.. I just saw the word engineer in that article and got a little steamed up. :) Forgive me.
"I know this... this is a unix system" -- Jurrasic Park
That's a good way to explain it. Perhaps I should have said that in the interview.
Brian Richardson - AMI
So you can turn Off tcpa , then the OS could turn it back on 'for' you.
Actualy, the system needs to be started when the computer is powered up, otherwise it dosn't work. The AMI guy mentioned that, but he didn't really emphasize it as much as he should have. if TCPA could be started back up by the OS, then it could also be started back up by some cracking software, or something.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
i=(i-i) is clearer than i=0? Hardly
To my grandmother they're both equally incomprehensible.
But my grandmother doesn't read C source code.
Likewise, the average C programmer might not get XOR AX, AX, but then again, they don't read 8086 assembly language either.
To somebody who knows ASM, XOR AX,AX is meaningful. To somembody who doesn't, MOV AX,0 is not. As a matter of fact, a C-only programmer would probably translate MOV BX,AX as AX=BX and not correctly as BX=AX (ie - move BX INTO AX, and not the correct meaning). (Heck - who decided to put the destination BEFORE the source in i86 ASM?)
What exactly do CD keys and registration requirements indicate if not a complete distrust of the end user's good intentions?
Actually, CD keys are *reasonable* and non-invasive steps a software company could and should take with its software. As the software companies are quite aware that a single valid CD key could indeed athenticate scads of bootleg copies, they are in fact trusting the end user to a very great extent, CD key or no.
Take the recent story on Quicken's Turbo Tax program, where Quicken removed your option to print returns on a computer other than the one the software was originally activated on. Do you think maybe Quicken did this because they don't trust you?
No, I think Quicken did this out of a fevered, greed-drenched imagination which caused them to hallucinate losing billions of $ to software piracy. Greed, not trust, is the issue here.
Why would Microsoft do this if they trusted their customers? Hint: they wouldn't.
Ironically, however, Microsoft has no trouble trusting corporations who buy as few as 5 licenses, since they do not have to jump through the product activation hoops at all. I'm sure you knew that. Microsoft simply did this to penalize the small user (who has little clout individually with the company because he doesn't buy thousands of licenses at a time) who has 2-3 machines at home and was installing a single legitimately purchased copy to both machines--and Microsoft wanted to double its money. Greed again (not necessarily intelligence for the long haul.)
Bottom line: software companies do not trust you.
True, no doubt. However it is more an issue of greed than I think it is one of trust. After all, Microsoft got very, very rich before the first copy of Product Activated WinXP was sold (all their "piracy estimates" notwithstanding.)
Don't like this? Buy/support/use software that does not constrain you. That's your option. Boycotting AMI or TCPA-enabled motherboards does not solve the problem; those manufacturers are responding to a demand from software developers and content owners.
What a load...;) There is no reason any bios company has to stop selling its non-TCPA builds. They can sell both, and the idea that they would have "no demand" for non-TCPA formats is ludicrous. After all, who is the ultimate customer of the bios company--hint: it's not the software developers, it's not the content owners--it's the *end users who buy the motherboards.* Was it the "content owners" which influenced bios companies to start making bios versions with all kinds of adjustable parameters, parameters that for years were excluded from the user CMOS interface (ram timings, voltage regulation, etc?) *chuckle* Hardly (snicker)
Companies large and small who forget who their actual cutomer base is will regret it, I predict, because their customers will go elsewhere. There's an old capitalist adage that businesses today would be well-advised to heed: the customer is always right. It would appear that some companies today are so confused they don't even know who their customers actually are--they think the middlemen they sell to are their customers. However, it's the needs and demands of the end user that shape the order of the middlemen companies. If the last guy in the chain loses his business (in this case the motherboard makers) then everybody upriver loses theirs, too. I shouldn't even have to say any of this it's so obvious.
"So you can turn Off tcpa , then the OS could turn it back on 'for' you."
More likely, you will find that unless you turn it on, your machine will interoperate less and less with other machines.
So you will turn it on because you the alternative is to live as a hermit in the hills.
No system is secure if you have physical access.
Most people have mastered locking their doors, locking their servers is a totally different matter. None of the solutions provided deal with physical access, only logical...
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
I would enjoy a "safe-spot" in my PC for things to run clean and safe and where computers can identify me when I want them to (Citibank, EA game servers, etc). But what will happen with this control VERY quickly will be bad enough to negate any and all good aspects.
>Believe it or not, such abusive "features" are unpopular and cause companies that employ them to lose market share.
True... EXCEPT for Microsoft. That's the threat. That's the worry. That is what will - despite my passion for free computing, free information, etc - turn every computer into an X-Box type device in 5-10 years. Don't envy X-Box users. When ALL computing is done on a closed PC, where opening the box will get us arrested, we'll remember the days back on Slashdot when all this was nothing more than wild paranoia.
I remember only a few years ago people joking around about being arrested for swapping songs. "Never gonna happen." was the general response.