Dartmouth Project Combines Linux With TCPA

SiliconEntity writes "A new project from Dartmouth College demonstrates significant advances in combining Linux with TCPA. The software turns a Linux PC into a 'virtual secure coprocessor', which is able to check that none of its software is compromised and even (in a future version) prove its integrity to a remote system. Full GPL source code is available for the 2.4 kernel. This work is separate from the earlier IBM research which also combined Linux with TCPA, with the new project apparently more complete and with a road map towards a very functional Linux based trusted computing system. This could be an important technology for Linux to challenge Microsoft as it pushes forward with NGSCB (aka Palladium)."

Comments

And this is desireable, how?

[HiThere]

This calls into question the wording of the GPL. Perhaps it needs to explicitly forbid using GPL software to create certain kinds of restrictions.

Monopolies are inherrently evil. This is a step towards creating a new kind of monopoly, and thus should be disabled before it starts.

One needs to question the ethics of anyone who would work on such a project. And one definitely needs to be dubious of any company that would sponsor it. And any purportedly educational system that would foster such research. That something can be done is not sufficient reason to do it. This thing is so wide open to abuse by already powerful and abusive groups that no decent person would have anything to do with it. Except, perhaps, to sabotage it.

All legitimate proposals that I have heard for uses that it could properly serve can be dealt with by other means which are less open to abuse.