IBM Trials TCPA Chip Under Linux

keihin writes "From IBM: IBM's Global Security Analysis Lab (GSAL) has done extensive analysis of the Trusted Computing Platform Alliance (TCPA) chip available on some IBM systems. We have the chip running under Linux, and have studied it extensively. In order to clarify a lot of misunderstanding about the chip, we are making available some helpful white papers and open source device drivers for Linux, so that interested people can test and use the chip in an open environment."

Comments

Why I didn't know IBM was involved

[Amsterdam Vallon]

Apparently, the TCPA folks keep the list of companies involved private which is why I had never really heard of anyone aside from IBM involved in this alliance.

However, there's a full list here.

Check out *nix.org , a dynamic, informative, and fun portal for fans of BSD, Linux, OS X, & Solaris!

just remember....

[Anonymous Coward]

Real World TCPA != DRM

Microsoft's TCPA == DRM

This is NOT about digital rights management

[metamathica]

Before people get too confused and start to complain (quite reasonably) about the RIAA, MPAA, etc: this chip is not designed to facilitate DRM. In their "why TCPA" article, they explain why it's not even particularly well suited for such systems.

Rather, it's primarily about protecting a user's private keys and facilitating (through hardware acceleration) a serious increase in the use of encryption to promote security and privacy.

Re:This is NOT about digital rights management

[curious.corn]

A HW accelerated encryption engine would give us snappy remote xsessions out of the box with ssh->ssl->kernel hw calls. I'd love this, imagine running fwbuilder on your remote fw from home. It's a must for teleworking.

Re:This is NOT about digital rights management

[iabervon]

But it doesn't facilitate DRM at all; the private key never leaves the chip, and it isn't set until the user sets it. This makes it useless to anyone *except* the user; the MPAA doesn't have the key or even the chip. The user, at least, has the chip.

Public key cryptography works best if the user can apply the key, but cannot leak the key no matter what.

It would be rather different if the private key on the device was known to some content provider, but this setup couldn't be used for DRM even if you tried to. The closest thing would be a content provider giving you a file that only you could read; but you can still do whatever you want with it once you read it.

I much much rather have TCPA then pallidium

[Billly Gates]

I view TCPA as more of a security enhancer then for drm. I trust IBM more then Microsoft to make sure Linux will run with it and it has alot of cool features.

I like the extra random number generator chip as well as the encyption chip. I can imagine it would help e-commerce greatly and can be used for programs that require random number generation. Also hardware does not need to be modified. Only the motherboard. Microsoft wants each component to trust each and have it encyrpt everything. Its scary because its so proprietary. In the Xbox even the intel pentiumIII chip encyrpts and decypts data. Infact it will not run any assembly code unsigned. Spooky.

I hope IBM horries up and convinces other OEM's to use TCPA before they decide on using pallidium. Also IBM has been selling TCPA systems for close to 2 years now. SO yes they are not a threat to freedom or a drm sollution backed by hollwood.

At least read some of it before commenting...

[26199]

The white paper explains why it would be easy to circumvent this chip if you have physical access to it.

DRM it is not.

They've released full GPL source code.

Looks like it could be useful.../p>

Passing the blame.

[Phoenix823]

While perhaps technically inaccurate as to the difference between TCPA and Palladium, I think the spirit of the attacks made against the platform are valid. While yes, perhaps TCPA doesn't directly enable all the horrible things we Slashbots complain about, but the paper is just passing the blame.

IBM says "this has nothing to do with DRM. In fact, it doesn't protect it from owner-tampering so it's not any great DRM replacement." Of course, they don't mention that it's more than likely that in the near future, a version of Windows will take advantage of it. Maybe the OS will encode all recorded music with your public key so it's unplayable on any other machine? Who knows, the possibilites really are limitless.

I wonder how many TCPA computers will be running Windows with Palladium enabled. Neither paper seemed to be catering to a very tech-head audience, so why make needlessly complicated distinctions between TCPA, Palladium, databuses, etc?

Re:Passing the blame.

[Billly Gates]

Well the good news is that you can turn it off. The bad news is that the email from grandma may require palladium and not TCPA. TCPA is different then Palladium and has been in use since 99 on almost all IBM systems. Ask any ThinkPad owner. Also there are only 2 chips in the motherboard that make up the TCPA as well as a special bios.

In palladium each component must be certified and it uses a trust relationship to prevent tampering. To me palladium sounds like a way for Microsoft to make sure you can not upgrade more then afew components at a time without paying the piper but who knows. It sounds more stict and anti-user. Also rumours have it that Bill Gates wants to use palladium as a way to stomp out piracy in asia and they also view OOS as the bigggest competitor since os/2. Scary.

TCPA was formed to secure and enhance e-commerce as well as secure corporate desktops. In this day and age the security is greatly needed.

If hollywood wines and complains and the hollings bill passes, I prefer TCPA anyday and its a more open and industry standard solution. Linux will be supported since any thid party can sign it and no company is the "official" gatekeeper. Think SSL. The gatekeeper argument is the scariest and as long as it stays open then its not a problem. IBM has invested billions in Linux and wants it to susceed.

Some nice quotes from the misinfo rebuttal

[pridkett]

For those of you who didn't read the stuff:

The bottom line is that TCPA and Palladium are two different projects. The TCPA hardware provides only a subset of the full Palladium functionality, which includes significant additional hardware and software elements. Only TCPA already has a freely downloadable detailed specification, and a tested port of all driver and library level software to Linux.

Don't get completely up in arms about this is what is trying to say. Then he has an even better quote later:

My personal opinion (not speaking for IBM) is that DRM is stupid, because it can never be effective[6,7], and it takes away existing rights of the consumer. But this is not the place for that debate. To condemn TCPA for the ability to run a bad application is absurd. This argument is exactly like the arguments of governments in their attempts to ban encryption, under the rationale that encryption can be used by terrorists to hide their messages.

Ahh...it's great to take stuff outta context.

Quick notes for spastic no-read replies:

[moogla]

1) IBM doesn't care about DRM. In fact, this chip is completely unsuitable for DRM (and the white paper author was kind enough to explain why... protects you from SOFTWARE attacks, not hardware.)

2) The specs are open. There is a gratis GPLd demonstration driver/API for linux.

3) (My impression) is that it helps solve certain security chicken and egg problemswhen you want to do things like mount an encrypted hard disk, but not want to store the decryption key in memory.

4) Primary advertised use: for signing and verifying your OWN code, i.e. to protect yourself from root kits.

Re:Great news

[sfe_software]

Good to see??? umm... I hope your joking, cause otherwise, you have NO FUCKING CLUE WHAT YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT!!!

I'm honestly not sure what you mean here, but from your .sig link to notcpa.org, I guess you're not a supporter of the TCPA.

So tell me -- did you read the whitepapers mentioned in the article? Or are you simply going by the FUD presented at notcpa.org?

Seriously, whether you are for or against the TCPA, read the white-papers IBM put together. Note that it has nothing to do with DRM or Palladium, and the author of one of the papers says "DRM is stupid, but that's another paper".

Or go read the specifications yourself.

In short:

1) The TCPA is NOT Palladium
2) It does NOT protect against physical tampering (thus not being well suited for DRM usage)
3) It doesn't use any cert authority or "code signing" or anything like that. This again is not Palladium, and this is not the XBox.

It really is about helping to protect you against crackers or viruses/worms from obtaining your private keys (be it SSH, SSL, PGP, or whatever future application comes up).

And IMO it is good to see IBM on-board. They've already written GPL drivers for Linux, and are showing massive support from the very beginning -- something you rarely see with *any* new specification or proposed standards. Any Linux user should be glad IBM is on-board as well.

People please remember

[codepunk]

Microsoft to Dell: could you please ship our new paladium board in your computers.

Dell to Microsoft: Fuck off if word gets out that you cannot copy stuff on one of our machines we are certainly ruined.

Microsoft to Dell: Do it or else

Dell to Microsoft: Fuck you we are shipping Lindows

You dont make sense

[QuantumG]

Let's stop thinking about Windows for a second, seeing as IBM has presented a bunch of GPL drivers for Linux. On my Linux box, I choose how to use this chip. Instead of running ssh-keygen I run a client program and tell the chip to generate my keys. Then when I want something encrypted with the private key that it has generated I just send it the data and it encrypts it for me. I'm completely in control.

The most obvious use is to authorize my connection to a remote server. If the private key is safely locked away on the chip then I can be assured that only my machine can connect to the remote server with that identity.

Another use would be to sign emails. Again, I can be assured that any email that is signed with a key that is safely locked on the chip could only have been signed by someone using my machine.

In fact, I'm hard pressed to come up with a way that this chip could be used to do DRM under Linux. Can you?

Re:You dont make sense

[jbolden]

In fact, I'm hard pressed to come up with a way that this chip could be used to do DRM under Linux. Can you?

Yes you would do it exactly the same way you do it under windows.

Sony has a nub (say a version of the Linux kernel) which they trust. You can download these kernels from Sony and full compliance with the GPL Sony release full source. Any change to the kernel changes the signature of the nub and thus makes it untrusted by Sony. So in other words Sony can now sign off on your OS kernel.

Because of the TCPA public key they can also lock stuff to your machine. And they can combine these, that is they can give you content which can only be used on your machine running and only when running particular kernel.

But they can go even further than this. The kernel supports trust and they can release a media player which will ask the kernel if the application is running inside a virtual environment or directly against the trusted kernel. Since the kernel supports trust it tells the truth, since the you can't change the kernel without changing the signature on the nub you can't make a kernel that lies.

That's DRM.
And everything I've mentioned can be 100% open source GPL and it will work exactly the same.

Re:Linux vs. Linux users

[Arandir]

That is it was designed to encourage the free sharing of information in a communal fashion.

Thomas Jefferson (paraphrased): "If men were angels there would be no need for government, but since they aren't, there is."

It would be really nice if people didn't steal. But they do. Therefore I fully support the right of anyone to aquire and use the strongest locks possible. The only way I know of preventing people from stealing my financial, medical and personal information from my computer is to lock it up. If TCPA make this easy to do without giving up rights to third parties, then the prudent will use it.