Trusted Computing And You

sebFlyte writes "There's an interesting look at the Trusted computing initiative running over on ZDNet UK, written by security guru Bruce Schneier. He looks at the suggestions for best practice made in a recent policy document, and Microsoft's 'Machiavellian manoeuvring' to stall said document. He posits their moves are to avoid having to enforce such best-practice when it comes to Vista's DRM and other copy-restriction technology." From the article: "This sounds great, but it's a double-edged sword. The same system that prevents worms and viruses from running on your computer might also stop you from using any legitimate software that your hardware or operating system vendor simply doesn't like. The same system that protects spyware from accessing your data files might also stop you from copying audio and video files. The same system that ensures that all the patches you download are legitimate might also prevent you from, well, doing pretty much anything."

Comments

Love those dups

[g051051]

http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/08/31/154 6252&tid=172&tid=109

Thanks again!

[garcia]

Well, because the "staff" ignored my duplicate notification, as usual, here's a link to the previous story and here's my comment there.

Please note, just because the domain of a news site is different and someone included Schneier's URL this time doesn't mean that the story isn't a duplicate.

Thanks for helping to make Slashdot a better place.

Re:Thanks again!

[BlackCobra43]

It was very likely Zonk him/her/itself that modded you down (hence no points wasted at all). Consider tha you were at 4 and got modded down to -1 - along with others - far more than any single mod could do. He/she/it's pretty touchy.

Mark this informative if only for vigilante mod justice.

The problem with "trusted" computing

[WCMI92]

Is that YOU, the computer OWNER is not trusted. This is the first step towards taking actual ownership away from the owner and handing it over to the manufacturer after the fact.

Which is why I do not support Digital Restrictions Management.

Interestingly enough ...

[vlad_petric]

In security speech Trusted != Trustworthy. If you say that X is "Trusted", it simply means that the security of the system depends axiomatically on X being secure. So if X is secure, everything is ok, but if it is insecure, it breaks the whole system. "Trusted" doesn't actually say whether X is secure or not (that's what "Trustworthy" is for), it just makes a statement about the security of the whole system depending on the security of X.

Having learned that, a few companies (I believe M$ was one of them) changed from "trusted" to "trustworthy"

Mac

[Mr_Silver]

The same system that ensures that all the patches you download are legitimate might also prevent you from, well, doing pretty much anything

Which is why I'm looking forward to getting a Intel based Mac which can happily dual boot XP and OSX until a certain point when I'm fine with formatting the XP bit entirely off.

(assuming, of course, that Apple doesn't go into this too, in which case I'm stuffed)

Solution: Owner Override

[CodeBuster]

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has posted numerous articles concerning the subject of DRM and trusted computing which carefully and thoroughly explain to the user the promises and potential problems with these technologies. There is one article in particular which suggests "Owner Override" as a solution to the problem of policies being enforced against the owner of the computer as if the owner was an adversary. The article is linked below:

Trusted Computing: Promise and Risk

Buying is licensing

[jd0g85]

I'm talking about the loss of rights to use media and information THAT YOU BOUGHT, NOT rented, or licensed.

Not to be a troll, but there is no difference between "licensing" something and "buying" it. When you walk into a store and purchase something, you are agreeing to an implicit license. Usually this is along the lines of, "return it here for up to 30 days. If anything goes wrong after that, the manufacture will fix it up to a year. Beyond that, do whatever you want but we're not repsonsible."

When people refer to "licensing" they usually mean signing some other contract that does not include the "do whatever you want" clause implicit in "buying."

When "YOU BUY" something today, more often then not their is an explicit license agreement. If you don't like the limitations, it's your own damn fault for spending money on it. You should have found a license that allowed you to own the product.

Don't get me wrong, I hate M$ and the **AA's as much as anyone and despise their licensing schemes. You must realize, however, that you do not have any rights that are not given in the contract that you agreed to in purchasing something. Where as in the past licenses were implicit and you could claim that the store owner/manufacturer is responsible for "X", now the contracts are explicit.

Until we get around to changing the law (in America), it's perfectly legal for companies to take your "rights" away, but only if you're dumb enough to let them.