Intel Demos McAfee Social Protection

MojoKid writes "During the Day Two keynote address at Intel Developer's Forum, Renee James, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Intel's Software & Services Group, talked about software development, security and services in an 'age of transparent computing.' During the security-centric portion of the keynote, James brought out a rep from Intel's McAfee division to show off a beta release of their McAfee Social Protection app. If you're unfamiliar, McAfee Social Protection is a soon to be released app and browser plug-in for Facebook that gives users the ability to securely share their photos. As it stands today, if you upload a photo to Facebook, anyone viewing that photo can simply download it or take a screen capture and alter or share it wherever they want, however they want. With McAfee Social Protection installed though, users viewing your images will not be able to copy or capture them. In quick testing, various attempts with utilities like Hypersnap, Snagit or a simple print screen operation to circumvent the technology only resulted in a black screen appearing in the grab. Poking around at browser image caches resulted in finding stored images that were watermarked with the McAfee Security logo."

Comments

Analog hole

[Anonymous Coward]

* takes out camera phone and copies that supposedly uncopyable image

Re:Analog hole

[Martin Blank]

Even better: running it in a virtual machine and taking a screenshot of the VM console.

Re:Analog hole

[TranquilVoid]

Precisely, it's a borderline useless idea that requires too much integration with a single company for it to catch on. I gather this works by requiring the app to even view the photos, so this makes it incredibly restrictive. I personally have a zero-app policy on Facebook, but I suppose a lot of people are almost tricked into installing apps - "Click here to see friend X's exciting breakfast pic!".

Next, a Facebook app by itself is insufficient. Pure HTML/JavaScript is sandboxed, so it requires you also install a McAffee toolbar so it can hook into the OS. They are unlikely to have a Linux version and, if they do, there are plenty of ways around it. You could hack the kernel if you really had to.

Of course they're not trying to secure an online banking system, just tap into any internet privacy fears that have trickled into the minds of the technically uninclined.

Re:Analog hole

[jrumney]

Precisely, it's a borderline useless idea that requires too much integration with a single company for it to catch on.

But its on Facebook, so they've already got the perfect target audience for borderline useless ideas that require too much integration with a single company to catch on.

VM?

[dskoll]

What if you run everything in a virtual machine and take a screenshot of the VM window?

Sounds like snake-oil to me.

Re:Pointless

[Robadob]

The article was a bit misleading, but from watching the video its just a facebook app which blocks print screens/copy paste of images you upload through it. Doubt it will take long for tools which bypass this, and chances are the photos will stay within mcaffee social share rather than the general facebook albums, which will prevent a large number of people from using it.

Re:So..

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

McAfee has been spending 100% of their efforts on not making any friends for years.

Already Broken

[sexconker]

Start
Magnifier
100% Zoom
Views > Full screen
Print Screen
Start
Paint
Paste

Lack of clue

[symbolset]

How does a project like this even ship without at least one person involved saying "Hey, wait..."?

Re:Downside: requires app/plug-in

[lgw]

* The photos are hosted on a McAfee server

Oh, won't that be enteraining when the central DB eventually gets hacked and all the photos are released.

Just broke their plugin

[timepasser]

Here's the write-up: http://blog.securitee.org/?p=241