EFF Position on Trusted Computing

Seth Schoen writes "EFF has just released our analysis of Trusted Computing. We find that the technology could benefit computer security, but must be fixed to ensure that the computer owner is always in control. We also propose a specific way of fixing it. There's coverage of our position at news.com. More articles should be up in the near future at the new EFF Trusted Computing page. Thanks to all the people who helped us understand this technology!"

Comments

Re:Sad to see EFF legitimizing this

[Alsee]

How are you going to assure that a change was made by you and not by some software pretending to be you?

Actually that is pretty easy, you press a special button/switch. Malicious software is incapable of faking actual physical control. I proposed exactly such a modification to TCPA months ago.

I e-mailed this one of the main TCPA proponents about this back in January. It was David Safford, author of Why_TCPA and TCPA_Rebuttal. I explained this system and pointed out that there every single claimed benefit of Why_TCPA works just as well with actual and full owner control like my (and the EFF's) proposed modification grants. He did not dispute this.

His only reply was to suggest this change would no longer keep laptops secure against a thief. This suggestion fails on two grounds. First of all it directly contradicts TCPA_Rebuttal where he claims TCPA is not designed to be secure against physical access and that this supposedly 'proves' that TCPA is not designed for DRM. If TCPA is not supposed to be secure against physical access then it is disingenuous to claim it is supposed to protect a laptop against theft. The second reason his 'theft' argument fails is that it is simple to combine a physical button-press with an owner ID code or password before full control is given. A theif cannot get this owner password, and software can neither get the password nor press the button.

Granting the owner of the machine to his own keys (passwords) that are locked in the TCPA chip gives the owner full control over the system. There is absolutely no justification for denying the owner access to his own keys. The only purpose for this design requirement is to use it as a weapon against the owner and for various varients of DRM.

Of course Microsoft and the TCPA proponents will never accept my proposal (and the EFF's proposal) because the only real motivation for this hardware change is for DRM-type purposes. If owners maintain actual control over their machines and it can't be used for DRM systems then the entire project is a waste of time. Everything else is just a smoke-screen. TCPA will not prevent your computer from being infected with a virus, and it will not prevent that virus from slagging your entire hard drive and everything on it. The only thing it will do is prevent the virus from distributing copies of your 'secure' music files.

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