Microchips With Multiple "Selves"

Stony Stevenson brings news from Rice University about designing integrated circuits with multiple distinct identities, which could be used in new types of hardware-based DRM, among other things. From the news release: "'With "n-variant" integrated circuits, it is possible to design portable media players that are inherently unique,' said Farinaz Koushanfar, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Rice and principal investigator on the project. 'New methods of digital rights management can be built upon such devices. For example, media files can be made such that they only run on a certain variant and cannot be played by another.' Koushanfar said content providers could also use n-variant chips to sell metered access to software, music or movies because the chips can be programmed to switch from one variant to another at a particular time or after a file has been accessed a certain number of times."

Comments

*Ahem*

[Wandering Wombat]

Is there a good use for this technology?

Re:*Ahem*

[TubeSteak]

Is there a good use for this technology? Sure, "to sell metered access to software, music or movies"
Good is a subjective judgement.

I think it's bad for consumers, but from a business standpoint it's great*
The only way I can see this taking off is if either the hardware or content is really cheap

*assuming you can get any kind of market penetration

Re:*Ahem*

[JonTurner]

A good use? Certainly: It illustrates beautifully that a hardware solution won't solve a social problem nor rescue a flawed business model.

Re:*Ahem*

[couchslug]

"Is there a good use for this technology?"

Yes, if malware is programmed to disable systems using it.
That use is called "object lesson". :)

Emulators

[edlinfan]

I bet that emulators will defeat this. You could presumably use them to simulate any one of these "unique" processors. Such emulators probably won't work on mobile devices, though.

That number is...

[Hoi Polloi]

after a file has been accessed a certain number of times

For me and this technology that number would be 0.

And who's going to buy it?

[Hatta]

If it can play unprotected audio, then all the DRM in the world isn't going to help anything. People will still swap mp3s. If it can't play unprotected audio, no one will ever buy it.

Re:And who's going to buy it?

[darealpat]

Microsoft, for Zune. Or Apple. Don't look too shocked by the latter. We can see how much it wants to lock you into iTunes... and how many of us so willingly let them.

sad but true, eh.

Re:And who's going to buy it?

[TheSeventh]

I don't think that these companies will ever really "get" it and stop trying to eliminate the effects of DRM and sharing and look at the cause.

This type of n-variant system will never work because if I own a copy of a song, I want to play it on my mp3 player, in my car, on my home stereo, or on my computer, depending on where I am and what I'm doing. All of these are legal activities, and I don't need to buy 4 copies of a song.

So, if I can have 4 copies of a song I bought, then it becomes highly difficult for the record companies to make sure I don't take one of these copies and give it to someone else. This is one of the biggest flaws in their current business model.

The other thing these people will never understand, is that with digital copies of ANYTHING, modifications can and will be made. A copy of a song that can only play on your mp3 player? Only until someone hacks the copy so it can play everywhere, rendering this "new technology" useless.

People have and will always share music and movies and software and whatever else they either can't or don't want to pay for. What these companies should do is to make these items Convenient, Low-Cost and Available everywhere. Why steal that song when you can get it for under $1? Why burn a copy of that movie when you can get a high-quality version cheaply? Customers get what they want (high-quality, convenience, low-cost, etc.), and the companies continue to make money.

Yet, these companies continue to piss more and more people off, and remain clueless. They screwed the customers with $15 CDs that had 1-2 songs anybody actually wanted. Then they resisted making individual songs available because the rest of the crap on a CD would never sell.

The lesson they should have learned YEARS ago, is that if you piss off your customers, and don't give them what they want at a reasonable price, some of them will find a way around your restrictions, illegally if necessary.

Re:And who's going to buy it?

[amRadioHed]

You're locked into iTunes, but not locked into the iTunes store. The iPod's would never have gotten so popular if people weren't able to supply their own mp3s.

Two things

[digitrev]

One: is this practical from a manufacturing perspective? If it isn't, this'll never take off the ground.

Two: how much does this complicate programming? Is it possible to program for all variants at once? Can you make an interpreter to do so? If this makes the life of a programmer too goddamn difficult, it won't get off the ground.

Re:Two things

[sohp]

If this makes the life of a programmer too goddamn difficult, it won't get off the ground. Hahahaha.

Hahaha.

OK, now, I...hahahahaha..

You've never programmed for a living I take it?

There are many many technologies out there that make life for programmers too goddamned difficult, but that doesn't prevent the PHBs and the marketecture-driven corporations from buying them and telling the line programmers to make it work. And there are programmers, sofware companies, and consultancies with misaligned ethical compasses more than willing to throw droves of bodies at a problem while picking clean the pockets of any business willful or uninformed enough to insist on trying to make the unworkable work. As a matter of fact, some might argue that the entire business model of DRM-related technology is built around selling snake oil that can never really accomplish the desired goal.

It might never work, but as long as someone keeps buying the promise, it will make money.

Sure to be a hit

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet another technology that will be expensive and offer no benefit to consumers whatsoever. I'm sure it will take off just like all of its DRM'd cousins from the past.

you can burn in any code

[JCOTTON]

What about programmable EEPROM technology from, say, the 80's? For you youngins, this was a way of burning code into read-only memory. There are also programmable processors, where the connections between gates can be permantently burned and thus programmed. Bottom line, there are many old ways of permenently programming processors. What is so new now?

"Hello, World"

Nothing to see here. Move along people

[ady1]

Another day, another retard who thinks that he can make something work which is proved not to.

I hope my tax dollars don't fund that university

[pseudorand]

> content providers could also use n-variant chips to sell metered access to software, music or movies because the chips can be programmed to switch from one variant to another at a particular time or after a file has been accessed a certain number of times. By switching the chip's identity, wouldn't that disable not only the metered content I've consumed the appropriate amount of times but also all the other content that I may not have consumed yet? Or do I need a separate chip for each song I buy?

How can we set the bar so low?

[beavis88]

FFS, would it be possible to invent some new technology for the purpose of letting us do NEW things, rather than keeping us from doing the things we used to be able to do (and for free, at that)?

And if you make your own?

[Nerdposeur]

I record music. I wouldn't buy a player that won't let me play my own stuff, or my friend's stuff, just because an authority hasn't signed off on it.

With home recording becoming cheaper and better all the time, I expect that this will be more of an issue in the future, not less. The era of "top-down" music distribution is ending.

Re:And if you make your own?

[digitrev]

If they get their way, people will resort to any means necessary. If this boils down to breaking the law, then people will do so. Hell, if it means going back to wax cylinders, it will be done.

Hostile device. Very clear judgment.

[Odder]

It is inherently hostile and it's creators consider you the enemy. The subjective judgment has already been made:

"The key here is that a successful adversary has to simultaneously compromise all chip variants with the same input. By switching among the variants -- and by designing each in a security-conscious way -- we can make it impossible for attackers to do this."

The customer is the "attacker" who might "compromise" the device to exercise their fair use rights or -gasp- share with their friends. Apparently, the device makers think rights, sharing are even their customers are bad.

you STILL dont get it do you ...

[unity100]

we DONT want any kind of "Digital rights RESTRICTION"

Re:Hmm.

[TubeSteak]

Is there some sort of compact way that the chip can send its state to a remote agent(without revealing that state, and making reverse engineering easy)? I also had some questions about wtf the article was talking about.
"Security by diversity" caught my eye, because it sounds like "security by obscurity" and I know that is a stupid idea.

The "security by diversity" aka "N-state variant" systems do not rely on any secrets. Their basic mode of operation is like having a multiple redundant system made up of different technologies (but on one chip). Even if you can exploit/corrupt one of them, the others carry on as planned. So to exploit the system, you have to craft something that will exploit all the states with one input.

You could replicate this with multiple cores/CPUs, but that leaves the system vulnerable to hardware attacks. So cram it onto one chip, use an encrypted path (HDCP) from the chip to the display device and you're pretty well set if you're a content producer.

Does the manufacturer of the device need to disclose the state of all devices to all vendors in order for them to build customized binaries for those devices? I'd assume they have to disclose what states the chip can handle

Bad from the business standpoint also

[mangu]

from a business standpoint it's great*
The only way I can see this taking off is if either the hardware or content is really cheap

*assuming you can get any kind of market penetration

The problem is that any DRM system intrinsically raises costs. I don't know why so many executives fail to notice this: physical goods have their own intrinsic copy-protection, yet they cannot be priced higher than the market will bear. Honda doesn't try to sell Civics for the price of Ferraris, even if no one can copy a Civic like you copy a song.

By spending more on copy-protection they are pricing their products further away from the optimum price.

Re:Bad from the business standpoint also

[TubeSteak]

I don't know why so many executives fail to notice this: physical goods have their own intrinsic copy-protection, yet they cannot be priced higher than the market will bear. Have you ever heard of a "counterfeit"?
It's what they call a copy of a physical good.
Saying a good can't be priced higher than the market will bear is a tautalogy.

Honda doesn't try to sell Civics for the price of Ferraris, even if no one can copy a Civic like you copy a song. That's an issue of demand, not of pricing.
3 cylinder Geo Metros are selling for waaaay above their Blue Book value on eBay.
Why? Because they're suddenly in demand.

The problem is that any DRM system intrinsically raises costs.
By spending more on copy-protection they are pricing their products further away from the optimum price. I'm assuming that the math works out such that whatever they spend on copy-protection is less than whatever they're losing from counterfeits & copyright violations. If every consumption equals a purchase, the copyright protections will pay for themselves very quickly. Lower profit margins are fine if you can realisticly make it up on volume.

Re:Hostile device. Very clear judgment.

[vux984]

Rights management isn't a new concept, whereas fair use is. ...For him that stealeth, or borroweth and returneth not, this book from its owner...

Right. The difference being that back then the OWNER of the book had all the rights.
Today, the OWNER of the book is the one being cursed.

Re:Hmm.

[plasmacutter]

all this is then, by your description, is multiple layers of security by obscurity in one chip.

Just like blu-ray, people will break down 2 or more separate drm schemes and STILL get the data out to the p2p networks.

brilliant! GoodLuckWithThat

Re:Other Costs.

[digitrev]

Devices should never be outlawed. Unless their only purpose is to cause damage, and I mean damage to humans, then it's legal. Outlaw certain uses, but never the device itself. Otherwise you're just as bad as the people who outlaw devices that can circumvent DRM measures.