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IBM Hardwires Encryption Into Chips
zenwarrior writes "Reported by CNET, a new chip technology termed Secure Blue by IBM will keep users' data encrypted and secured at virtually every moment on essentially anything in which the chip can be used. Data is even encrypted in RAM, leaving display for users' viewing as almost the last place it isn't encrypted. This has to be considered decidedly anti-Homeland Defense by the current administration. If so, when will we see it if ever?"
This article is short on details about the encryption, and it says nothing at all about the current Homeland Security opinion on said technology. I sure know people care about having their data safe and that is a huge problem. Ask the FTC about that. Discussing this further without more facts could just be a waste of time. This is a simple technology "We done it!" announcement. Nothing more.
And what will happen if you will replace the logic board of those computers? Will all your data be gone even for you?
It would seem to me that the highlighted phrases above would set some sort of bound on how sophisticated this encryption can be. Besides, there's probably a bigger incentive to offer encryption that is "good enough for DRM" than there is for offering encryption that is "uncrackable within the nearest 1000 years, even by governments". (Yeah, I realize I'm not adding much useful saying that...)
Besides, it just looks like something to dangle in front of "content providers" (encrypted all the way up to the last step, etc). Paranoid geeks are, I guess, more likely to depend on software tools (PGP/GPG, encrypted partitions) to keep data safe.
Well, unless I can varify the code or make the chip from a copy of it's mask myself - I am pretty much taking it on faith from IBM that it is secure from the eyes of the government. (no offense IBM, but I prefer the security of open review) Untill independent sources can take the chip and put it under an electron microscope and say: Yes it's designed secure - then it's pretty much not secure. An if it's firmware that can be re-programmed, then it is especially not secure if the governments hands get on it anywhere in the distribution chain.
I'm not so sure that the Feds require encryption backdoors for devices. I think you may be thinking of CALEA and related laws. But AFAIK they refer only to tapping phone lines, rather than encryption.
Even if the Feds do pass a law requiring backdoors for devices, the law could be circumvented by doing the encryption in software. Not as convenient for the end-user perhaps, but millions of people around the world do that every day thanks to the various implementations of public-key (RSA) schemes.
Software trapdoors trump hardware backdoors.
Insert witty sig here.
All of this encryption is done in hardware. I was considering, for my next laptop purchase, getting one with a MiniPCI slot that could have a crypto accelerator inserted (even a cheap one can handle over 300MB/s throughput, which is faster than my hard disk can do). Having this on-chip or even on the motherboard would be a huge incentive for me.
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In a way this is not so incremental.
The fact that the entire system is encrypted, with the exception of the output device and in-CPU communication, electronic wiretapping can be made inpractable. Yes the crypto can be broken, but if the crypto holds up for either the statute of limitations &&|| the perps lifetime then you might as well not wiretapped at all.
Yes you can still get at teh output device, but if that device is a digital earphone (or better yet a bone conduction transducer) that decrypts at the output point, then you are SOL. Same goes for video, if it is one of those laser scanning thingies that "writes to the eyeball", then you can not intercept the signal in plaintext anywhere.
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
What we need, Doc is to kick out most of the goddamned lawyers and elect other professionals to fill their positions. Nearly every congressman, senator for the last bazillion years was either a lawyer or has had law training. It's ridiculous. What makes lawyers better at running a country than other professionals? We need ex-medical doctors, engineers, architects, scientists, biologists, mathematicians, programmers, chemists, librarians, teachers, dentists, pharmacists, nurses, psychologists, businessmen, merchants, farmers, etc. We need balance in the system. Back when this country was founded, there was more balance, but we need more yet.
Around two thirds of the attendees of the constitutional convention were either lawyers, or had law training, but the rest were involved in other occupations, similar to the ones I listed above, like merchants, securities traders, farmers, physicians, and had participated in misc. economic stuff. There were very few career politicians back then, and most of those who had political experience came upon it because of their occupations, business interests, because of trading, and just being outstanding men. Of course, post-constitution, most of these men actually did go further in politics, so maybe this was the beginning of career politics in our country...
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
rumors are that the xbox360 is already using fully encrypted ram. look at its L2 cache miss latencies.
Paolo Attivissimo's blog provides plenty of documented, photo and other evidence that the new Macs do have TPM chips in them. He started out skeptical but soon got plenty of pictures of motherboards from the new Macs. They plainly have Infineon TPM chips in them. It's not clear what if anything they are being used for, but there is no doubt that Intel Macs have TPMs.