IBM On Trusted Computing, Linux

An anonymous reader writes "A number of IBM's computers have been available with an "embedded security subsystem (ESS)" for some time now. This site lists three research papers regarding the new TCPA (Trusted Computing Platform Initiative) security chip developed by IBM, including the full GPL-ed source code to a Linux driver for this chip. In particular, the 'Why TCPA?' paper claims that IBM's TCPA chip is in fact of extremely limited use for DRM, as it contains no tamper resistance; the chip is designed to fend off software attacks, not physical attacks. An interesting take from a company with very solid products."

Comments

Re:DRM == no sale.

[brianjcain]

Apparently not...(Did you RTFA?) I had always been against TCPA, but here's an excerpt:

What TCPA is Not Some of the papers critical of TCPA claim that TCPA is primarily intended to support Digital Rights Management (DRM), such as the copy protection of music or video data, on behalf of the content owners. They argue that TCPA would take away user rights on their own machines, preventing backup, time and space shifting of legally purchased content. Debating the merits of DRM is a complex, controversial topic, and won't be covered here. ... (Personally, I do not believe it is possible do provide effective copy protection at all, but that's another paper).

The TCPA chip is not particularly suited to DRM. ...

If you ask me, I would think Linux, et al could leverage whatever benefit provided by well-documented TCPA chips (if any), and ignore the others. You probably already didn't like Microsoft's software anyways, so why waste time worrying how they'll utilize TCPA?


(Now gov't mandating of TCPA hw/sw is some seriously dangerous shit. Let's keep way away from there).