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A Critical Look at Trusted Computing
mod12 writes "After just attending a two-week summer program on the theoretical foundations of security (one of the speakers was from Microsoft research), I have been interested in trying to find out if the "trusted computing" initiative was still alive. I got my answer today in the New York Times from an article that was fortunately rather critical of the concept."
I love the image at the top of the article showing the "sample of the code for a more secure version of Microsoft Windows" -- just some random binary file open in a hex editor.
Gotta love the NYT - their editors are on the ball!
for those of you who don't know, Markoff is the journalist who wrote several articles about kevin mitnick in which he "created the myth of kevin mitnick" (in kevin's words). many untrue allegations were presented as supposed facts.
but don't let that discourage you from reading the article.
This post was brought to you by the number 584811 and the characters / and .
The word "trust" is pretty much the central idea in formal security. And ultimately is comes down to deciding if one person trusts another person. Of course when you mix in technologies, then that expands into trusting the system components. Do you trust the website is the correct one? Do you trust the CA registrar. Do you trust that the web browser isn't lying to you. Do you trust that your keyboard isn't recording all your keystrokes? Its all about trust, and no secure system can avoid the subject. And no formal security method can avoid it either.
So yes, trusted security is very much alive, or it had better be, or we won't have any security. But the big question is whom or what is being trusted? And the big media companies are trying their best to confuse the issue. It's just like their "secure media". Their concept of trust is that they, the media distributors, want to be able to trust your hardware to not trust you the consumer. They also want to also insure that other consumers will not trust you, or you could otherwise become your own media producer and distributor and compete with them. If DVD players only play content that is digitally signed by the cartel, then you are barred from competing because you can no longer produce your own content that other's hardware will trust. But on the other side I want to trust that my computer is not infected with a virus; I want to trust that my legally copied media is not corrupted by the media police. Trust is the just the tool.
Trusted computed could be a very good thing, but you absolutely must define what you mean by trust before you can begin any discussion or evaluation, or to say whether it it "bad" or "good". From a purely technical and formal perspective trusted computing is the next step forward. From a society's perspective the answer is not so easy.
Beyond changing the appearance and control of Windows, the system will also require a new generation of computer hardware, not only replacing the computer logic board but also peripherals like mice, keyboards and video cards
Like most new Windows features, I don't see anything in this that the consumer actually wants, I think it is just a way to force yet another upgrade on us.
-- the only thing we have to fear is really scary things
"I don't know about computer hardware going up in value, but I'm hoping some company will start selling non DRM processors as soon as Intel and Microsoft pull out of the market. They might be as fast as Intel or AMD processors but I'm sure there would be a market for them."
What's wrong with current processors? I mean, do we REALLY need 3GHz machines? No, I've a couple that are below 1GHz and unless I wanted to play some insane game at high resolution, it's perfectly fine.
Besides, even if Digital Restrictions Management is in the processors, it likely can be ignored or disabled by the BIOS. For AMD or Intel to come out with a processor that REQUIRED DRM to operate would be to commit corporate suicide.
Look for crafty motherboard makers like Abit, etc (who cater to the geeks) to add DRM disabling as a feature just as they do with overclocking. Abit doesn't exactly care what Intel or AMD thinks of them, they care about what their CUSTOMERS want.
Which is why they make easily overclockable boards, the infamous (I had one) BP6 dual celeron board, etc.
There WILL be a market for a board that locks out DRM. If only among the tinfoil hat crowd, but given the OUTRAGE over the P3 serial number, I can't imagine there not being a lot of noise over DRM in the processor... At least enough to get the option to turn it off.
Corporatism != Free Market