Have Microsoft and Konami announced when Nocturne in the Moonlight is coming? I'd rather play it on a PS1 or PS2 but it's interesting that they're rereleasing it.
Even in Windows Vista, you still need a floppy disk to back up your logon credentials so that you can recover encrypted files if the OS fails. There is still no way to back this up to a disk file so that you can burn it to CD-R then delete it.
They did make manufacturers rewrite their drivers to support DRM. Microsoft even required manufacturers to implement hardware "tilt bits" that trigger if something weird happens, like voltage differences that could occur if someone is tapping the bus.
99.9% of Windows users will not know what a symbolic link is, and even less will know how actually enable the feature for non-administrators. This means that no end-user application can ever use them. A lot of work for nothing - good job Microsoft.
They should have added an API call to tell kernel32, "hey, I know how to use symbolic links, so let me use them".
The article doesn't mention that process startup is now quite different from the other versions of Windows NT.
In previous versions of NT, process creation was quite different from systems such as UNIX. The system call NtCreateProcess creates a "blank" process with nothing in it but ntdll.dll and the new.exe file mapped into memory. No stack is allocated, and no threads are created. In normal process creation, the parent process actually uses the debugger API calls to allocate memory for the stack into the new process's address space, copies the command line and environment into the new memory, and creates the initial thread pointing at kernel32!BaseProcessStartupThunk. It resumes the thread and off it goes. (NT has no concept of environment or command line at the kernel level.)
This changed in Vista for one reason: DRM. Microsoft made it so that certain processes, namely wmplayer.exe and halo2.exe, cannot be a target of the debugger API calls for obvious reasons. It ignores privilege level in blocking the API. If the old method of starting processes were used, then the parent process could start wmplayer.exe with patches to steal the DRM keys or dump decrypted data to disk. Vista's kernel now does the entire initialization for these processes to close this hole.
By the way, Microsoft needs to change that web page so that it doesn't select Spanish over English if you have Spanish listed as an acceptable language in your browser, even if English is higher in the list. This happens for both IE7 and FF2.
Pity these cheat devices have all but died on modern inter-networked consoles.
It's not the internetworking that killed cheat programs for consoles; it's public-key cryptography. All the new consoles use public-key cryptography to ensure that no unlicensed software is possible. No amount of reverse engineering can help you.
Only mathematics has ever been able to stop cheat software. RIP cheat devices 2006.
1. The most devastating attack that can be done against software players would be to use malware to extract keys. There are many, many zombies out there. The malware could search for installed HD-DVD/Blu-Ray player software on the victims' machines that it knows how to break, extract the unique key from such software, and send to the malware author. There would then be enough keys known that only revocation of the entire product line's keys could get around the problem. I wonder whether they've considered this scenario. (However, one mitigating factor is that malware is done for profit, and this wouldn't be profitable. For-profit pirates just copy disks outright without bothering to decrypt.)
2. The reason the AACS made that wording about the players not following the "Compliance and Robustness Rules" is probably so that they can invoke the parts of the contract allowing them to fine the licensee millions of dollars.
I don't know of any calculators of that size that can do modular exponentiation of large numbers (and related functions). I've always wanted one that could. PARI/GP on a calculator would be nice.
Hexadecimal is also a nice feature, but there isn't any handheld I know of that supports hex nearly as well as Windows Calculator.
I did not like FF8, FF10, FF10 1/2, FF11, or FF12. FF9 was an anomaly in the decline. The series seems to have gone way downhill, and it looks to me that an exclusivity contract with PS3 for FF13 will be the end.
Block ciphers and hash algorithms are basically the same thing in two different modes. If you look at the SHA-1 algorithm, you'll notice that the main part of the algorithm is taking a 160-bit input (previous hash) and a 512-bit input (data to hash) and producing a 160-bit result (new hash).
Something about the SHA-1 algorithm is that if you know the 512 bits of data and the 160-bit output, you can find the 160-bit input. Just do all the rounds in reverse. This means that if you rearrange the parameters, you can make a 160-bit block cipher: the 512 bits are the key, and the 160 bits are the block to be encrypted. Knowing the key lets you reverse the whole thing. This is what the SHACAL algorithm is.
You can turn a block cipher into a hash algorithm as well, by using the data to be encrypted as the key.
Block ciphers and hash algorithms are designed with different security goals, however. A block cipher cares most that you can't find the key if given plaintext/ciphertext pairs. A hash algorithm cares most that two keys do not have the same effect, because those two keys are a hash collision by definition. As a real-world example, the "Tiny Encryption Algorithm" has a flaw where each key functions identically to 3 others. On a block cipher, this means that the algorithm is 4 times weaker, because there are 1/4 the keys - not a big deal if the keys are big enough. When using it as a hash algorithm, however, it means that each input has 3 other easily-found inputs that have the same hash! This is what the piracy group Xecutor exploited to break the "version 1.1" Xbox.
What is the probability that we are the first intelligent species in the galaxy? It's vanishingly small. Therefore, if galactic colonization were possible, it's most likely that Earth would've been colonized already.
It's similar to the argument that time travel is impossible: if time travel is possible, then why haven't we seen any time travelers?
Yes, there are other possible solutions to these questions, but it's interesting to think about.
Every copy protection system these days requires a kernel driver - otherwise Daemon Tools would win every time. Installing a kernel driver requires administrator privileges for obvious reasons. Some retailers refuse to put unprotected games on the shelves.
The blinking effect from the NES was the copy protection check failing. The copy protection chip would reset the NES after a second if the cartridge didn't respond properly.
Later models of Dreamcast don't boot the special multisession disks at all, for obvious reasons. There were a few legitimate music CDs that had Dreamcast content on them, but Sega sacrificed that feature to prevent piracy - a good decision, considering.
I live (and vote) in California. What were we supposed to do in November? These were our choices:
- Richard Mountjoy, a far right Christian with all the usual values. - Diane Feinstein, a bleeding-heart liberal who is a bought and paid member of the mafiaa *.
A lose-lose situation. I voted for technofascism over theocracy.
* To avoid a slander lawsuit, I note that the misspelling of "mafia" with an additional "a" is intentional and is a known term on this discussion forum. It does not mean the Cosa Nostra.
DRM systems existed long before the filing date - what was legal then can't be illegal now just because it was patented afterward; it would implicitly be prior art.
I don't trust Red Hat - what is to say that down the line Red Hat won't make their own DRM system?
In 32-bit Windows NT, you can enable PAE (paging address extensions) mode and the kernel can support more memory. No process can access more than 2 GB memory, but more than 2 GB can be accessed among multiple processes. This works fine because no 32-bit program will access more than 2 GB anyway.
(Yes, there is a mode to go from 2 to 3, but that has problems with newer video cards, and few programs support it.)
Microsoft had the foresight with Windows NT to make PHYSICAL_ADDRESS, representing a hardware-level memory address, a 64 bit value in kernel mode even on 32-bit platforms. This means that an issue like this is less likely to occur, since driver authors have that drilled into their head. This is why enabling PAE with the/PAE kernel command line option generally works without problems.
When there are problems with NT, they're generally caused by devices being physically unable to access addresses above 4 GB. However, such a case would be a driver bug because the driver can tell the kernel that such a limitation exists.
SRP would go a long way to prevent phishing more reliably, and you don't even need a trusted authority (though one is recommended).
SRP is a password-based system, rather than a key-based system. SRP validates not just that the client knows the password, but that the server knows the password (hash), all the while not revealing anything useful to an eavesdropper or a man in the middle. It uses the password to establish a shared secret (session key) between the client and server for further communication.
It would help with phishing, because if the server you're connecting to doesn't have your password (hash), the logon attempt will fail without giving the phisher anything useful. SSL isn't enough for this, because phishers just get SSL certificates.
The weak point of SRP is establishing the password at account creation, and here SSL is important. Banks would go further and use out-of-band communication (phone, etc.) to help with account creation.
Web browsers don't currently support SRP, but supposedly the Firefox team wants to add it. An important part of such a feature will be making unfakeable dialog boxes so that novice computer users understand when it is safe to enter an important password. UI design means a lot.
I hope they can take this opportunity to eliminate PS/2 ports once and for all. Even now you still see computers with these ports.
The main reason I want PS/2 to disappear is to force keyboard and mice manufacturers to make USB versions - too many otherwise good keyboards and mice are PS/2 only.
We hear this suggestion all the time, but the reality is that the reason Firefox and Opera are "more secure" is that there are less people using them. Their market share isn't worthwhile to the commercial malware authors.
Every "dot" release of Firefox you'll see 5 more bugs colored red, indicating an exploitable bug. Opera fixes them in secret, but it still has them. All the browsers have security problems, and it's mostly due to the complexity of all the features that have to be supported.
I hope Firefox is at least compiled with/GS and/NXCOMPAT.
I don't like Adobe and don't want any of their garbage on my system. GIMP is a "good enough" image editor for non-professionals, and FoxIt works great for PDFs. But there is no replacement for Flash, and too many web sites require it.
I installed my extra copy of Windows XP 32 in VMWare so that I could run Flash for GooTube videos. I won't run Adobe programs outside a sandbox.
Slashdot Mirror
Have Microsoft and Konami announced when Nocturne in the Moonlight is coming? I'd rather play it on a PS1 or PS2 but it's interesting that they're rereleasing it.
Even in Windows Vista, you still need a floppy disk to back up your logon credentials so that you can recover encrypted files if the OS fails. There is still no way to back this up to a disk file so that you can burn it to CD-R then delete it.
Melissa
They did make manufacturers rewrite their drivers to support DRM. Microsoft even required manufacturers to implement hardware "tilt bits" that trigger if something weird happens, like voltage differences that could occur if someone is tapping the bus.
See my reply to TheNetAvenger below.
Click here. He talks about a lot of things, including these "protected processes", and even says that the purpose is for DRM.
Melissa
99.9% of Windows users will not know what a symbolic link is, and even less will know how actually enable the feature for non-administrators. This means that no end-user application can ever use them. A lot of work for nothing - good job Microsoft.
They should have added an API call to tell kernel32, "hey, I know how to use symbolic links, so let me use them".
Melissa
The article doesn't mention that process startup is now quite different from the other versions of Windows NT.
.exe file mapped into memory. No stack is allocated, and no threads are created. In normal process creation, the parent process actually uses the debugger API calls to allocate memory for the stack into the new process's address space, copies the command line and environment into the new memory, and creates the initial thread pointing at kernel32!BaseProcessStartupThunk. It resumes the thread and off it goes. (NT has no concept of environment or command line at the kernel level.)
In previous versions of NT, process creation was quite different from systems such as UNIX. The system call NtCreateProcess creates a "blank" process with nothing in it but ntdll.dll and the new
This changed in Vista for one reason: DRM. Microsoft made it so that certain processes, namely wmplayer.exe and halo2.exe, cannot be a target of the debugger API calls for obvious reasons. It ignores privilege level in blocking the API. If the old method of starting processes were used, then the parent process could start wmplayer.exe with patches to steal the DRM keys or dump decrypted data to disk. Vista's kernel now does the entire initialization for these processes to close this hole.
By the way, Microsoft needs to change that web page so that it doesn't select Spanish over English if you have Spanish listed as an acceptable language in your browser, even if English is higher in the list. This happens for both IE7 and FF2.
Melissa
Only mathematics has ever been able to stop cheat software. RIP cheat devices 2006.
Two separate but important points:
1. The most devastating attack that can be done against software players would be to use malware to extract keys. There are many, many zombies out there. The malware could search for installed HD-DVD/Blu-Ray player software on the victims' machines that it knows how to break, extract the unique key from such software, and send to the malware author. There would then be enough keys known that only revocation of the entire product line's keys could get around the problem. I wonder whether they've considered this scenario. (However, one mitigating factor is that malware is done for profit, and this wouldn't be profitable. For-profit pirates just copy disks outright without bothering to decrypt.)
2. The reason the AACS made that wording about the players not following the "Compliance and Robustness Rules" is probably so that they can invoke the parts of the contract allowing them to fine the licensee millions of dollars.
I don't know of any calculators of that size that can do modular exponentiation of large numbers (and related functions). I've always wanted one that could. PARI/GP on a calculator would be nice.
Hexadecimal is also a nice feature, but there isn't any handheld I know of that supports hex nearly as well as Windows Calculator.
Melissa
I did not like FF8, FF10, FF10 1/2, FF11, or FF12. FF9 was an anomaly in the decline. The series seems to have gone way downhill, and it looks to me that an exclusivity contract with PS3 for FF13 will be the end.
I might buy a desktop computer in the next year. If Leopard's Boot Camp can run XP 64, I would probably buy a Mac, but otherwise a PC.
Melissa
Block ciphers and hash algorithms are basically the same thing in two different modes. If you look at the SHA-1 algorithm, you'll notice that the main part of the algorithm is taking a 160-bit input (previous hash) and a 512-bit input (data to hash) and producing a 160-bit result (new hash).
Something about the SHA-1 algorithm is that if you know the 512 bits of data and the 160-bit output, you can find the 160-bit input. Just do all the rounds in reverse. This means that if you rearrange the parameters, you can make a 160-bit block cipher: the 512 bits are the key, and the 160 bits are the block to be encrypted. Knowing the key lets you reverse the whole thing. This is what the SHACAL algorithm is.
You can turn a block cipher into a hash algorithm as well, by using the data to be encrypted as the key.
Block ciphers and hash algorithms are designed with different security goals, however. A block cipher cares most that you can't find the key if given plaintext/ciphertext pairs. A hash algorithm cares most that two keys do not have the same effect, because those two keys are a hash collision by definition. As a real-world example, the "Tiny Encryption Algorithm" has a flaw where each key functions identically to 3 others. On a block cipher, this means that the algorithm is 4 times weaker, because there are 1/4 the keys - not a big deal if the keys are big enough. When using it as a hash algorithm, however, it means that each input has 3 other easily-found inputs that have the same hash! This is what the piracy group Xecutor exploited to break the "version 1.1" Xbox.
What is the probability that we are the first intelligent species in the galaxy? It's vanishingly small. Therefore, if galactic colonization were possible, it's most likely that Earth would've been colonized already.
It's similar to the argument that time travel is impossible: if time travel is possible, then why haven't we seen any time travelers?
Yes, there are other possible solutions to these questions, but it's interesting to think about.
Every copy protection system these days requires a kernel driver - otherwise Daemon Tools would win every time. Installing a kernel driver requires administrator privileges for obvious reasons. Some retailers refuse to put unprotected games on the shelves.
The blinking effect from the NES was the copy protection check failing. The copy protection chip would reset the NES after a second if the cartridge didn't respond properly.
Melissa
Later models of Dreamcast don't boot the special multisession disks at all, for obvious reasons. There were a few legitimate music CDs that had Dreamcast content on them, but Sega sacrificed that feature to prevent piracy - a good decision, considering.
I live (and vote) in California. What were we supposed to do in November? These were our choices:
- Richard Mountjoy, a far right Christian with all the usual values.
- Diane Feinstein, a bleeding-heart liberal who is a bought and paid member of the mafiaa *.
A lose-lose situation. I voted for technofascism over theocracy.
* To avoid a slander lawsuit, I note that the misspelling of "mafia" with an additional "a" is intentional and is a known term on this discussion forum. It does not mean the Cosa Nostra.
DRM systems existed long before the filing date - what was legal then can't be illegal now just because it was patented afterward; it would implicitly be prior art.
I don't trust Red Hat - what is to say that down the line Red Hat won't make their own DRM system?
In 32-bit Windows NT, you can enable PAE (paging address extensions) mode and the kernel can support more memory. No process can access more than 2 GB memory, but more than 2 GB can be accessed among multiple processes. This works fine because no 32-bit program will access more than 2 GB anyway.
(Yes, there is a mode to go from 2 to 3, but that has problems with newer video cards, and few programs support it.)
Melissa
Microsoft had the foresight with Windows NT to make PHYSICAL_ADDRESS, representing a hardware-level memory address, a 64 bit value in kernel mode even on 32-bit platforms. This means that an issue like this is less likely to occur, since driver authors have that drilled into their head. This is why enabling PAE with the /PAE kernel command line option generally works without problems.
When there are problems with NT, they're generally caused by devices being physically unable to access addresses above 4 GB. However, such a case would be a driver bug because the driver can tell the kernel that such a limitation exists.
Melissa
SRP would go a long way to prevent phishing more reliably, and you don't even need a trusted authority (though one is recommended).
SRP is a password-based system, rather than a key-based system. SRP validates not just that the client knows the password, but that the server knows the password (hash), all the while not revealing anything useful to an eavesdropper or a man in the middle. It uses the password to establish a shared secret (session key) between the client and server for further communication.
It would help with phishing, because if the server you're connecting to doesn't have your password (hash), the logon attempt will fail without giving the phisher anything useful. SSL isn't enough for this, because phishers just get SSL certificates.
The weak point of SRP is establishing the password at account creation, and here SSL is important. Banks would go further and use out-of-band communication (phone, etc.) to help with account creation.
Web browsers don't currently support SRP, but supposedly the Firefox team wants to add it. An important part of such a feature will be making unfakeable dialog boxes so that novice computer users understand when it is safe to enter an important password. UI design means a lot.
I hope they can take this opportunity to eliminate PS/2 ports once and for all. Even now you still see computers with these ports.
The main reason I want PS/2 to disappear is to force keyboard and mice manufacturers to make USB versions - too many otherwise good keyboards and mice are PS/2 only.
We hear this suggestion all the time, but the reality is that the reason Firefox and Opera are "more secure" is that there are less people using them. Their market share isn't worthwhile to the commercial malware authors.
/GS and /NXCOMPAT.
Every "dot" release of Firefox you'll see 5 more bugs colored red, indicating an exploitable bug. Opera fixes them in secret, but it still has them. All the browsers have security problems, and it's mostly due to the complexity of all the features that have to be supported.
I hope Firefox is at least compiled with
Melissa
I don't like Adobe and don't want any of their garbage on my system. GIMP is a "good enough" image editor for non-professionals, and FoxIt works great for PDFs. But there is no replacement for Flash, and too many web sites require it.
I installed my extra copy of Windows XP 32 in VMWare so that I could run Flash for GooTube videos. I won't run Adobe programs outside a sandbox.
Melissa