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Intel Adds DRM to New Chips
Badluck writes "Microsoft and the entertainment industry's holy grail of controlling copyright through the motherboard has moved a step closer with Intel Corp. now embedding digital rights management within in its latest dual-core processor Pentium D and accompanying 945 chipset.
Officially launched worldwide on the May 26, the new offerings come DRM -enabled and will, at least in theory, allow copyright holders to prevent unauthorized copying and distribution of copyrighted materials from the motherboard rather than through the operating system as is currently the case..." The Inquirer has the story as well.
AMD++
A underperforming overpriced DRM-enabled furnace! I so want one...
Maybe this will be in the next gen consoles as well? It seems about the right time to reveal technology going in them and "forget" to mention this. Could outright kill mod chipping and pirated games.
I like muppets.
I know I will be sticking with AMD....
Umm... AMD is part of Trusted Computing Group.
Remember the hoohah over CPU IDs a few years back? They were supposed to enable software suppliers to keep track of things. There was so much of a kerfuffle that most BIOSes now have a function to disable it. I can see this going the same way when it turns out it causes Windows to BSOD or something stupid.
What if the systems have to be retrocompatible ? The re must be a flag to detect if the processor is a 945, and if not, software decoding happens. By making the system believe the processor is pre-945, there must be a way to circumvent the protection (does not work of course if a 945 is required, but this will need another three to five years).
Google passes Turing test : see my journal
There's still Cyrix.
I too have felt the cold finger of injustice.
from TFA: Additionally, AMT also features what Intel calls "IDE redirection" which will allow administrators to remotely enable, disable or format or configure individual drives and reload operating systems and software from remote locations, again independent of operating systems. Both AMT and IDE control are enabled by a new network interface controller.
lots of fun to be had with this I think..
$ strings FTP.EXE | grep Copyright
@(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.
I've been using AMD for years because of the price/performance ratio, their quality, and the fact that I like to support competition. I really hope that AMD doesn't bow down to the man and do the same thing. I'm really surprised that Intel would make such a move when they are battling AMD so fiercely.
This could be the reason that AMD takes over the lead. I know I'm not buying DRMed crap and I'm telling everyone I know the same thing.
As long as there are DRM free products, i will use them in all possible cases. I can't speak for the rest of the people, most of them probably just won't care...
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Well, its a good thing that that the IBM PPC processors don't have built in DRM Go Apple! :)
Tired of Apathy? http://apathyonline.net
How many more times will slashdot get it wrong?
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
They are a member of TCPA. They have not announced anything yet, however.
Open Cores, here we come...
"A truly wise man realizes he knows nothing."
I know there will be a lot of slashbots condemning Intel for this great move, but I really think they should be commented.
First off all, as we all know, the only way to keep something like a cultural production going is DRM. All the experts, like RIAA and MPAA confirm that.
So if you are in any way interested in the survival of something resembling culture and thereby civilization, you have to welcome this.
Second, and even more important to me, let us think about what computers are made for. What is their purpose?
Simple, to make the live of the users more simple. Now how better to achieve this than by takeing as much control from the user as possible and giving it to responsible corporate citizens?
So in that regard, great move by Intel.
Hail Intel!
Their reluctance to talk about specifics on the technology is what worries me. What if their DRM mistakenly identifies something on my hard disk as copyright material and prevents me from using my own very legal data? We can't be sure it won't thanks to jolly old intel.
This ATM and IDE control scares me the most though. Giving some random Joe the ability to manipulate my computer at a level BELOW the operating system!?!? HOO BOY! I can't wait to see how long it will take to patch the security flaws in there, in the mean time the script-kiddies now have a truly cross platform way to 0wn boxes.
When will people learn, you can't make something 100% secure, and security through obscurity is a bad idea? Lets just hope the guys in the white hats can reverse engineer this crap first and figure out a way to save the millions of innocent and ignorant customers who will end up with one of these chips in their box.
It's actually quite interesting.
They're not only talking about on-chip DRM, they're also talking about a "feature" called Active Management Technology in their new chipsets.
By the sounds of it, it's a firmware-level mini-OS that allows an administrator (or presumably anyone with the password, or the appropriate exploit) to, and I quote:
"remotely enable, disable or format or configure individual drives and reload operating systems and software from remote locations, again independent of operating systems
Frankly, that worries me quite a bit more than the DRM.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
"Secure hardware" is an amazingly difficult thing to achieve (by secure I mean secure from its user, of course). For instance, in the late 90s, smartcards were hacked by figuring out bits from their keys with differential power analysis.
The Raven
Being stupid has nothing to do with it. How many do you think will be aware of this new deal? Of the percentage that are aware, how many do you think will care?
I think you give the sheeple too much credit.
Provide a feature for someone other than those who are paying for your product? Yeah, um, lets see how that works out for you pal. I will personally avoid these things like the plague.
Frylock: "We should have cloned twenties, Jackson wouldn't have given a fuck."
If they announce that they are, I'm going to buy the fastest non-DRM-infested available chip they have and then I'm done with all this bullshit.
Maybe buy a little cabin and become a fisherman. Fuck the technology industry. The "content moguls" have fucking ruined it for everyone with their whining control-freakery.
I hope they dig their own graves with this one.
Anyone?
I think, therefore I thought.
I still think it might be possible to defeat this with an emulator.
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
Hasn't it been publicly stated numerous times that the whole reason China was pusing for localized Linux was to avoid having hidden backdoors on PCs in China that the government had no control over? If Intel is really installing a sub-system that is specifically designed to re-direct information it seems like a pretty obvious violation of that stated policy. It's hard for Intel to say they didn't know about it when it has been rolled out pretty much every time the topic of Linux and China gets mentioned in the IT press.
And is it just China? Don't a number of other countries have similar policies? This seems like it could have serious implications for Intel's global position. The US market is big, but it's not necessarily where the PC growth is coming from over the next few decades.
I see no mention on DRM tech in either the Intel 955 chipset or the nForce 4, so I see no reason why I won't buy a motherboard based off these chipsets. I also don't see any mention of DRM in the first dual core cpu Intel released, the Extreme Edition 840. All you people saying "Boycott Intel" are jumping the gun, just as I would expect slashdotters to do... Besides, what is DRM built into a chip going to do? If I have an mp3 without a drm tag will it delete it for me? There goes my completely legal mp3 collection...
From the article: However, Tucker ducked questions regarding technical details of how embedded DRM would work saying it was not in the interests of his company to spell out how the technology in the interests of security.
Also FTA: Additionally, AMT also features what Intel calls "IDE redirection" which will allow administrators to remotely enable, disable or format or configure individual drives and reload operating systems and software from remote locations...
Good grief, Intel, do you still believe that security through obscurity works? You're waving a big honkin' red flag that tells me this is going to be a hack magnet, and you think they're likely to be successful at it if they figure out how it works - and make no mistake about it, the blackhats WILL figure out how it works.
This is absurd. We all need to let Dell, Toshiba etc. know that if their systems have this functionality enabled, we will be shopping elsewhere.
#DeleteChrome
anyone see their new remote administration "feature" as a possible remote security hole regardless of OS? perhaps we just trust that it is 100% secure and unhackable. Additionally, AMT also features what Intel calls "IDE redirection" which will allow administrators to remotely enable, disable or format or configure individual drives and reload operating systems and software from remote locations, again independent of operating systems. Both AMT and IDE control are enabled by a new network interface controller.
-John Fenley
The owner of a machine can always turn off the machine's Trusted Platform Module using BIOS Setup, though works of authorship distributed through Trusted methods will no longer play until the TPM is turned back on.
Copyrights are much more complex than mere assertion by an object that it cannot be copied. When my Dell CPU says I can't backup an object, or copy it for use in a different location of my own, or for criticism, satire, or other fair use, or streaming (which the Library of Congress Copyright Office says is not a "copy"), how do I protect my rights? Send the Dell back, fight for a refund? Who's going to compensate me for their wrongful infringement of my rights? For my lost time, opportunites, labor, value expected but denied? And what about in countries other than the US, where copyright laws are different, often much more complex, and sometimes nonexistent?
It's a mistake for hardware engineers to generate law-enforcement in mass-consumer products. At most, optional hardware support for user opt-in, to make compliance easy enough that most people agree, should be available. Copyright violation is a problem for the justice system, with its presumptions of innocence until guilt is proven, due process, and human interpreters of whether acts were crimes or not.
This DRM CPU tech should go down in flames, like Intel's mandatory CPU serial#. Intel's got a lot more problems just rolling out CPUs that do what we want, like faster Pentium4s. They shouldn't be wasting developer time, eating die space, and complexifying throughput with half-bright consumer traps like this. Of course, AMD (and others) have the opportunity to speed past Intel, and give customers what we want. Not just spin their wheels trying to woo back Microsoft, as it looks to other CPU platforms. Because we'll all leave Intel hanging when a CPU comes along that serves us better.
--
make install -not war
... everybody who buys a preconfigured "closed" intel box will get one of these CPUs and it will be tooted as an extra feature.
o rp.
My guess is that the first round is for testing and then it will probably be back portet to a level of CPU's that somebody want to use in a set-top box.
This is where functionality like this would really shine in the eye of the media companies. A chipset/cpu like this, Windows Media Edition 2007 DRM+, will probably give you a box that nobody normal (joe-consumer) would be able to hack, making it possible to subsidise heavily (e.i. give it away) as you would be sure that it wouldn't be used for anything but the content you sell.
Intel will probably be able live down the loss of sale to geeks, when they sell 700 million of these boxes to AOL-TimeWarmer-Sony-Vivendi-MegaGlobalHyper-ROC-C
TC - My Photos..
Not backing Intel on this but that's possible right now. At this very moment the only thing that's keeps people's drives from getting wiped is the fact that virus writers don't feel like being that destructive.
They all think about it and know its possible but out of fear for what that would do to the world and how many years they would go to jail for, top virus writers simply don't do that. Look at all of the oppurtunities they've had over the last five years to wipe machines.
Mass Destrutction viruses are old school and it seems today its all about stealing Credit card info and address book entries. DRM or tricking the system into trusting code won't make it any easier. Windows already does that all on it own.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
What happens if a large corporation uses DRM to enforce copyright it *claims* to own but in fact does not. I'm thinking of someone alot bigger than SCO doing what SCO did (attempt to steal software copyrighted by others) but also having the power (unlike SCO) to actually shut down use of software.
These Intel executives sure love to lose money. We should really help them.
That would make sense from a Microsoft point of view... No way to secure XP (in a piracy of various sorts sense, the other kind of security is another discussion, albeit with a similar conclusion), so they ship a whole new OS coupled with forced hardware DRM in the hopes that they can use it to curb piracy?
Another question one might have is can you turn the DRM off? I say the answer isn't particularly important, even if you can turn it off now, that doesn't mean you will be able to for "DRM v2" which comes out in 6 months and will be required for all hardware in a year.
The final, most important question, is what are they going to do about Linux? Will Linux still run on these processors without a hitch? Will it be forcefully ousted and really cement the Wintel monopoly? Are they going to make it illegal to run anything but Windows on these processors? Are they going to actually support DRM on Linux in some meaningful way? (odd idea, but it could happen)
Too many questions, not enough answers, I think it's about time to buy some AMD stock.
Game! - Where the stick is mightier than the sword!
more die space and engineering resources spent for something that NO single customer wants, err if you don't count mega-corporations as customers...
now why would anyone want to spend money to reduce their existing functionality?
palladium and NGSCB has !!ALWAYS!! been about DRM.
and the only piece of evidence needed is the following: they hide the key from the ?legitimate? owner of the machine.
if this were about security, user security, then the user would know their own key.
simple as that.
thanks to Alsee and the other clear thinking individuals who help educate us against the evils of consolifying our computers.
just an extra note... seeing that AMD is also doing the same thing... and that IBM's cell processors are basically built from the ground up for DRM... where does that leave independant (HA!) cpu manufacturers who won't implement this garbage on their products? one has to wonder, there won't be any cpus left that function the way their owners want them to... err supposed owners.
Science : Proprietary , Knowledge : Open Source
So the Digit Online article says:
"...features what Intel calls "IDE redirection" which will
allow administrators to remotely enable, disable or format
or configure individual drives and reload operating systems
and software from remote locations, again independent of
operating systems."
Doesn't this sound just suicidally dangerous to every single
slashdot reader? Have we learned NOTHING about network
security over the history of the Internet?
Intel put this technology in at the hardware level and refuse
to tell us how it works!
So are we to believe that 'security by obscurity' is all that's
protecting us from random idiots reformatting our hard drives
and loading entire new OS's onto our machines? IRRESPECTIVE of
what OS I have loaded!?!?!
If the underlying security is good enough to make this even
REMOTELY bearable then there is no reason not to tell us (in
great detail) how it works.
If the security this uses is cracked within a year of the machines
appearing on the market, we'll have several million computers on
the Internet that are UTTERLY defenseless against hackers - and Intel
aren't even prepared to risk an open 'Peer review' of the technology!!
Think about this - if this can happen IRRESPECTIVE of the OS on
the machine - then there is no conceivable software defence against
hackers using this mechanism.
This is quite the most irresponsible idea I've heard in a very
long time!
www.sjbaker.org
However, [Intel's Australian technical manager] ducked questions regarding technical details of how embedded DRM would work saying it was not in the interests of his company to spell out how the technology [works] in the interests of security.
So, it's not like they are providing a general DRM enforcing capability that any copyright holder can use. Only those who are in league with Intel can use this. So they are clearly stating that this is solely a backdoor for the recording/movie companies and the "IP" companies. That's dandy.
happens when every embedded device is an agent of law enforcement. You can bet that if this goes mainstream, the end of Western Civilization is at hand. The term Ubiquitous Law Enforcement was invented by by noted science fiction author and computer scientist Vernor Vinge.
there would be no motivation to copy things if copyright law was in the least bit reasonable
Completely untrue. Most people will pirate what they want if they can do so. Low-price and other reasonable terms are largely red herrings, they don't really change things. Seen it all before with software sold in university bookstores. A textbook comes with a coupon for a heavily discounted commercial software package, one that has no anti-piracy. Sales of the software are negligible. The publisher then adds trivially defeated copy-protection, sales of the software approaches the number of textbooks sold. As long as a DOS "diskcopy" command could copy the software it was pirated, when a crack was need sales jumped wildly.
Which is why the **AA are are reporting losses. Wait, no - they're reporting record profits! Piracy has virtually no negative effect on the media industry at all, whatsoever.
(1) As I said in the GP some people download to preview. That spurs sales.
(2) Only a minority download to preview, the majority download for permanent use. That is lost sales. The fact that sales increased does not change this, it does not change the fact that without this piracy sales could be even higher. This difference between realized profits and potential profits is what the RIAA is fighting over. Your view of what is going on is very shallow.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created to serve the RIAA."
I have a dream that one day on the hills of the world the sons of former fair use advocates and the sons of former free thinkers will be forced to sit down together at a DVDs of our lame releases and pay for each second they watch (or don't).
I have a dream that one day even the state of the FSF, a heretic state, sweltering with the heat of communist cancer and zeolots, will be transformed into an oasis of profit and marketing.
I have a dream that my four children will one day live to rule a nation where they will not be judged by the restrictions we place on others but by the profit we can make for the RIAA.
I have a dream today.
Well, this strategy may backfire on US companies, when the Chinese, sick of having US DRM imposed on them, form a huge market willing and able to buy DRMless parts. At that point there'll be fabs set up in China or other IP-unfriendly countries churning out unburdened CPUs - and they'll probably be pin-compatible with US company parts. Then they'll get plenty of revenue importing them INTO the US - until the US outlaws 'em, at which point they'll make for lucrative smuggling opportunities.
Okay. So Slashdot's all upset about this.
Slashdot doesn't matter.
The thing we really need to be asking here is, how can the general public be made aware of this? And moreover, be made aware of it in a way that they understand, something like new computers with these specific Intel chips are set up so that software companies, like Microsoft, can take control of your computer and stop you from doing things they don't like."
A bunch of slashdotters doing a boycott won't really have any impact. But a few tens of thousands of average consumers walking into Best Buy with furrowed brows and saying they want to buy some kind of new computer, but they don't want it if they have this new "Intel D-Ram" thing (if this can be made to happen), is eventually going to hit corporate consciousness, maybe make Intel think about the issue, and maybe even convince AMD that this for once is not a buzzword it's best not to bet on.
Unfortunately consumers probably won't realize why DRM support in hardware is a bad thing for them until the DRM hardware becomes commonplace, and viruses and malware start taking advantage of the DRM hardware to do really, really nasty things. And eventually, they will. DRM hardware exists, once you strip away the PR, to give software vendors control of the hardware in place of the actual hardware owner; in the long run this is a proposition which is going to be as attractive to Gator as it will be to Real.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Huh? Why? You can keep thousands of things you would never buy, but you permanently use just because you were able to download them for free.
Frankly,I want and fight for people to be able to download anything -software,music,films- for personal use for free. Call me zealot if you like. But file sharing did nothing else than finally allowing people to share information and arts with anyone else, boosting the opportunities for our brains to learn and enjoy interesting things. Would you condamn free food if it was available, just because it would mean lost sales for McDonalds? File sharing means our brains are finally free from intellectual famine. I don't care if it means someone will pay for this, the advantages for humankind are too high.
-- Patent no.123456: A way to personalize
I've lived in quite a few places, and one of them was Poland before the wall fell, and you'd be amazed what kind of inventiveness your precious government comes up with when there is an ID requirement.
Just to name a few:
- the draft
- turning it into a tracker by requiring it to be used for more and more 'transactions' (see a book called 'this perfect day' by Ira Levin)
- instant 'fake' ids for govt operatives that disappear after their single use
- requiring you to 'check in' with your id card periodically if you're considered a security risk (and to be able to apprehend you if you do not the first time you have to use your card elsewhere)
and on and on and on.
1984 is really a date in the past you know... and it's us ordinary thinking persons that bringing it on.
It's called the slippery slope, ID cards today, totalitarian police state with absolute control tomorrow (or the day after).
Imagine if our friend from WWII would have had access to technology like this, there would have been no resistance at all.
MP3 Search Engine
I really can't. This is like Ford saying "Since the national speed limit is capped at 75 mph, all of our cars will have a built in governor that will prevent them from exceeding the speed limit, even in states without a speed limit". Only this is far more insidious.
Assuming that pirating protected IP is wrong (I'm not getting into that debate... let's say for the sake of argument that it is), this is still a very, very bad move, because:
A) Due to changes in pirating methods, DRM is probably going to change. Hard wiring DRM into the CPU would be something that would either become useless very quickly, or so restrictive that media that the user plays could easily be mistaken for being a pirated copy. (or both)
B) DRM in any current iteration doesn't do very well at determining illegal copies of media from legal ones. (Wait, because I copied this CD I *own* onto a CD-R as a backup, and the physical CD I *own* and paid good money for the rights to listen to got scratched, I can't listen to the music anymore on my new computer?)
C) Hardware should *NEVER* have restrictive control over the type of information stored on a hard drive or the type of information that can be sent over any network unless users are given an understanding of how that control works, and it can be %100 modifiable by the user, as well as being shut off. "Hey, this old file from an old legacy application won't load on my new computer because the CPU thinks it's a pirated game instead of statistical financial information. And you're telling me there's no way around it for 'security' reasons?"
D) The nature of DRM is that it's set by media corporations who have demonstrated over and over again that they are unethical and prone to abuse any power they have for their own ends. (Ask any up and coming recording artist that's been screwed over by an RIAA member record company). I'm sorry, but I really don't feel very good about my CPU looking into what files I'm trying to access from my HDD or send over the Internet when it's been programmed by what I believe to be a bunch of crooks.
Of course it's a bad idea, and one that will probably die a horrible death. Tech savvy end users will avoid chips that have DRM, and buyers for larger organizations will probably shy away from putting machines on their networks that restrict information in ways they can't control. As long as there's decent alternatives, it's not something I'm too upset about.
Then again, I've not purchased an Intel product for my desktop since the 8088 chip I had back in '87 (AMD has always seemed, to me, to offer a better deal), and while most of my laptops currently run Intel chips, if DRM is implemented on them I'll find another brand.
Note: I'm not an expert on this and thus might be wrong on some points, so I'm admitting this right now before a dozen replies come in saying I'm wrong and overzelous mods don't select 'Flamebait' or 'troll'.
The Internet is generally stupid
If DRM becomes more commonplace, then there will actually be less business for the large Entertainment companies. The reason is very simple, if DRM is sucessful, and more importantly becomes open to everybody to publish their own material and ensure that it is protected online, what is the point in using a large Entertainment company to distribute your product? None - you don't need to produce CDs/DVDs and distribute them to shops, you just need a website and a method of accepting payment.
Yeah, you might need to organise the publicity, yourself, but then so many large organisations have poor understanding of publicity that they leave to to independent agents anyway. And I'm sure if you talked to these agents in the right manner, they may do a deal on future profits.
There is also a question of whether a pirate could then use DRM to build a virus that is undeletable from your system. As I understand DRM is about restricting the movement of files, which in turn may cause considerable problems with virus checkers in the future.
Away, call me old fashioned, but if I really want to buy a piece of music, I would much rather go and order the CD from Amazon, or go round the corner to my local record store or supermarket. At least then I am reasonable confident that I will have music to play the day after the all the PCs in the world with DRM enabled connected to the internet mysteriously fail causing complete chaos.
The fallicy of that agrument is the implicit assumption that they even want to "protect" their content. They don't, copyrights have nothing to do with "protecting" content, and everything to do with controlling how people use and distribute information.
When you controll the distribution channels, you don't need to compete on merit against things like Linux. Instead you compete on who can garner the most controll over distribution.
Believe it or not, history is repeating itself here.
History teaches that during the 1800's there were many people who believed that the entire meaning and purpose of the industrial revolution was to leverage inventions like the cotton gin to expand their plantations for unlimited growth and profit. Ironically just the opposite was true;the industrial revolution demanded a mobile and skilled workforce.
First, they responded by making slavery last forever, and making laws so harsh you couldn't even teach a person of color how to read. Then they responded by trying to micro-regulate the northern states, then they responded by trying to break off from the Union and fence themselves off from the rest of the world causing all hell to break loose.
Today many in media circles believe that the entire meaning and purpose of the information age is to use inventions like the Internet to leverage their copyright holdings to the far reaches of the Earth for unlimited growth and profit. Ironically, just the opposite is true; the information age demands the unrestricted flow of information.
First, they responded my making copyrights last effectively forever, then they responded by making it so that illegal copying could be punished worse than rape, then they tried to micro-regulate the technology industries with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and now they are trying to fence the information they control off from the rest of the world with Digital Rights Management (DRM). We are now at the point where society must tell them to go to hell.
If someone can explain how this new chip feature is an atrocity against man,
I haven't followed it in years but wasn't one of the concerns with DRM, or more specificially "Trusted Computing", was that you wouldn't be able to install just any software you wanted? I don't know about others but I don't want anyone else to control what programs I install and use.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Not at all: you're making some assumptions that ignore the reality of this situation.
... it's about owning the channels of distribution, in an effort to continue excluding significant competition. Keep in mind that the history of the entertainment industry is one of monopolism, ongoing abuse of the legal system and utter disregard for anyone but themselves. Just ask any of the thousands of musicians still waiting to get paid. Go read the text of the DMCA and the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act. Then tell me that their actions are reasonable and just.
... "buy") written to their own specifications? No, "pirates" aren't the problem. Oligopolistic, criminal cartels and weak-minded Congressman are the problem.
This isn't about the content or the presumed lost sales due to P2P activity
So please, do not excuse the unenlightened, treasonous behavior of the media moguls or confuse them with ordinary business leaders just trying to make a buck: they have caused substantial damage to the legal system of the United States and have injured a lot of people using threats and intimidation. In fact, these "moguls" deserve to go to prison for a very long time. If we were still living in a just society that would have happened decades ago.
But there is another aspect to this that I think bears repeating. Why should a small group of companies and two "industry trade groups" be permitted to rewrite core aspects of United States Copyright Law to the detriment of all citizens? Why should a small group of corporations whose combined income is an insigificant fraction of the GDP of the nation be permitted to buy laws (and that's the correct term
By the logic of your argument, any obsolescent industry that is under fire from new technology and new ways of doing business should be able to go to Congress and purchase a quick fix. The entertainment cartels have always had emotional problems when dealing with new technologies (well, I think the folks that run them just have issues, period) and this is no different. The fact that those very same technologies have invariably made them even more money continually escapes them. They have tried repeatedly to use the power of the Federal Government to suppress innovative new products (cassettes, video tape, CD-R, DAT, you name it they tried to stop it.) Frankly, I'm getting more than a little sick of these whiny control freaks trying to keep the best of consumer technology away from us. Really, in the overall scheme of things, commercial entertainment just isn't all that important. If I had to pick some aspect of American culture that was worth preserving to the detriment of all others that would not be it.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
The OEMS don't give a damn about your pathetic little outlaw markets, they don't re-align billion dollar fabs and ship product to rust on the LA docks because it will never clear customs.
They won't have to "rust" on the docks, if there is a market there will be a way. If it comes to it and there's a market parts will be smuggled in, afterall if drugs can be smuggled many other things can be as well.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Image in three or four years when most PCs in use have this enabled. If it is hacked:
1. The black hats will 0wn most of these PCs and nothing short of replacing the hardware will fix this. Intel may then be forced to replace every CPU with technology they can prove in court doesn't pose such a risk (under consumer rights laws that require products to be fit for purpose which suppliers can't escape via a click thru license etc). If the vulnerability is in the support chips it would cost even more as the recall would require the replacement of hundreds of millions of motherboards!
2. If someone hacks the DRM component and frees everything by removing all the restrictions, the content owners who relied on this technology could sue Intel.
The media companies are moving to place themselves in the same position as the Catholic church did during the Inquisition.
Those in power in the governemnt go along with it because they need those corporations to help them stay in power.
A mutually beneficial relationships forms. The media companies want more control so they ask/pay the government. The government agrees so they can have more control as well.
Eventually all information will be controled, and the masses will follow (except for the rare few who go against the "establishment").
It's brave new world, and a majority of Americans are helping it.
~X~
~X~
If DRM can defeat spyware and viruses and help me keep my kids' computer safe for them to use, I'll consider it. Bonus if it helps drive down the price of legal online music and movies.
From what little information is available, the following appears to be the case:
- Unconditional Power Down
- Force Hard Drive Boot
- Force CD/DVD boot (may be redirected to net)
- Lock Power/Reset/Sleep buttons.
- Lock Keyboard
- Blank Screen
- User Password Bypass
- Remote Control Device Action (control peripherals)
There are also, of course, many functions for examining the state of the target machine.This system is not all that badly designed, provided it stays turned off except in corporate environments that really want it and understand its implications. But if implemented dumbly (with, say, the same keys on all machines, or an insecure administration machine) it opens huge security holes. For example, if all the help desk machines have the master RCMP keys to all the machines in the organization, it's almost inevitable that there will be a leak. Compare Kerberos, where there's a central machine that has to be physically secured, but all it does is key management.
Linux support for all this is possible; the interfaces are documented. And definitely, someone needs to explore RCMP messages on port 623 and find out what is enabled at by default.
And if anybody breaks into your corporate help desk machine, they 0wn the company.
But what happens when the OS turns on you? Let's say that a judge somewhere finds BitTorrent is an "infringing application", and orders Microsoft to disable the signature associated with BitTorrent? There, problem solved, no Microsoft boxes will run it. And now, the CPU is party to enforcing that restriction.
And what happens when it goes even further? Downloaded a copy of Star Wars III to your hard drive, and now you're trying to play it through Windows Media Player, DRM Edition? Not only is it going to refuse it because the file's signature is on the nightly-downloaded "do not play" list, but nothing is stopping them from reporting you to the MPAA.
Wanna run Knoppix? Sorry, but now the chip can identify that as an "infringing application."
With Trusted Computing, DRM isn't a choice -- it's the rule. DRM chips are simply the only playground on which they can be forced to happen.
John
Brain is my second favorite organ.
The way it works is Sealed Storage and Remote Attestation.
Sealed Stroage means a file is encrypted, and the hardware prohibits you from reading or modifying that file except with the EXACT software that created it or was explicitly authorized for it. If you attempt to modify the software the hardware generates different encryption keys and the file is unusable encrypted garbage.
Remote Attestation means your hardware can send an authenticated "spy report" on exactly what hardware you have and exactly what software you are running. You can refuse to send a spy report or you can destroy the spy report, but you cannot falsify it.
So you can buy (download) an encrypted song from the internet, or you can buy a box of encrypted software from the store, and they can refuse to send you the decryption key until you send that spy report. Actually they don't send YOU the decryption key, they send the key to your chip. They send an encrypted key, and that key is only decrypted inside the chip. Everything is then kept in sealed storage. You can destroy sealed files, but not read or alter them.
someone with kernel access
First of all the spy report would reveal if you have kernal access (and they won't send you any keys). Second modifying the system to gain kernal access will cause the Trust chip to generate a different internal decryption key, a useless decryption key, meaning you cannot read any sealed files or get at any sealed keys. Third, the hardware is also going to have new memory "compartments". Your DRM music software will be loaded into a "compartment" and EVEN THE OPERATING SYSTEM cannot look into this compartment or modify it without destroying it. I'm not certain, but I think these memory compartments may be encrypted in RAM and only decrypted as they enter and leave the CPU internal cache. So even wiring your computer to physically read the RAM may not even work for getting at keys or data or software in a "compartment".
companies authorized to produce each of the pieces of equipment involved.
The hardware won't work without a signature from the Trusted Computing Group. They will only give that signature to manufacturers contractually handcuffed to make only "secure" and compliant hardware. If some line of hardware is later found to have a "hole" in teh system then the Trusted Computing Group can toss that particular signature on a revokation list and all of that hardware DROPS DEAD. Compliant software will refuse to talk to that hardware or perhaps even refuse to talk to any machine containing that hardware.
Ugly ugly ugly.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Yes they have. It's just not shipping yet.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.