Politech has been slow to discuss this since I was in Moscow when Steven Levy's article appeared. Here it is: http://www.msnbc.com/news/770511.asp Other coverage: http://enquirer.com/editions/2002/06/25/fin_microsoft_discloses.html http:// www.nwfusion.com/news/2002/0625mspall.html http://news.ninemsn.com.au/Sci_Tech/story_34263.asp http://www.wired.com/new s/business/0,1367,53466,00.html --- Date: Tue, 25 Jun 2002 19:56:15 +0200 From: Lars Gaarden <larsgat_private> To: declanat_private Subject: On Palladium Declan, perhaps the following could be of interest to Politech: If you are to believe recent articles in the mainstream media, MicroSoft is working on the final solution to computer security and online privacy. http://www.msnbc.com/news/770511.asp http://news.com.com/2100-1001-938957.html From the news articles it sounds like the core of Palladium is designed as a system that computer security professionals call a "Trusted System". Trusted Systems have existed for several years, and are generally used by NSA and other organizations to protect classified information. One real-world example of a somewhat-trusted system is the Java sandbox. When your browser downloads a Java applet, you want to know that it is restricted - for example, that it can't access the disk and obtain a copy of your mailbox. To achieve this the Java interpreter runs the applet in a virtual sandbox and denies the applet access outside this box. The difference between a Java sandbox and a true Trusted System is that java is a pure software environment - the Java interpreter can't verify itself to make sure that it has not been altered in a way that would compromise the sandbox. In security lingo - the Trusted Computing Base which implements the Trusted System is not protected from tampering. From the description of Palladium, it sounds like it will have some additional hardware support in order to verify itself. So, Palladium will be a tamper-resistant black box inside your computer. Now, what can this be used for and why would we want this in the next computer we buy? According to MicroSoft, Palladium will supposedly seal information from attackers, block viruses and worms, eliminate spam, and allow users to control their personal information even after it leaves their computer. That sounds nice, but what does this imply? Information sealing: To protect your own information from hackers sounds like the only good feature of Palladium. I can put my credit card number, documents and other information inside the black box and control which software is allowed to access this information. Still, there are encryption programs out there today from companies like PGP that provides similar features. Malware blocking: Viruses and worms are basically just software. Malicious software, but still just software. And as such, they are virtually indistinguishable from other software applications. In order to block malware, you need a system where only 'approved' software is allowed to run. Approved software will be software signed by a key that the Palladium system trusts. That leaves us with one problem - who gets to decide which software is approved and which is not? Surely we can't give this power to the end-user that habitually click 'ok' on any security warning in order to see the latest cool mail attachment. As Melissa and other worms/viruses have shown in the past, this won't increase system security one bit. What MicroSoft is saying is that we are supposed to trust them to be the benevolent dictator that decides which software to trust. How will hobbyists or small ISVs get their applications signed? It sounds like MS is using the malware scare as a means to force feed us a system where only MicroSoft-approved code can run. Spam elimination: How do you eliminate spam? You can use certain heuretics to discover and block at least a portion of spam, but it is practically impossible to eliminate it using the current Internet e-mail system. A system like Palladium won't make traditional spam recognition any easier. However, it provides a secure key that can be used to sign your own email messages and it can verify the signatures from other Palladium users. It sounds like MS' 'solution' to spam is to classify all non-Palladium- signed email as spam and let only mail signed by senders that you have approved through. In MicroSoft's spam-free world, only Longhorn users can send e-mail to eachother. External control of information: Finally, you can control your personal information after it leaves your computer. Sounds nice until you rephrase it: if I receive content from your 'black box', you can set restrictions on this content and my 'black box' will make sure I can't do anything to the content that you don't want me to. This is exactly the kind of thing that Hollywood and the large music companies have been asking the technology companies to give them, and MS is providing it under the guise of protecting privacy. Palladium isn't a solution to computer security and privacy, it is a system designed to strengthen MicroSoft's control over the operating system platform and to make Windows the platform of choice for DRM- protected digital content. -- LarsG --- From: Amos Satterlee <asatterleeat_private> To: "'declanat_private'" <declanat_private> Subject: ATdS and MS Date: Thu, 27 Jun 2002 11:01:44 -0400 Declan: The Alex de Tocqueville Society says open source is a terrorist threat. They're paid for by MS. So far, so good. Then I ran into an interview with the MS lead for the Palladium initiative. "Juarez: ... As a side note, we will publish the source code on that Trusted Operating Root. We will make sure that people have the opportunity to really go deep on that and kick the tires and know that what we're doing in there is what we say we are doing." http://www.didw.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=74&mode=&order=0 Amos --- Date: Thu, 27 Jun 2002 13:42:45 -0500 (CDT) From: Mihai Christodorescu <mihaiat_private> To: Declan McCullagh <declanat_private> Subject: Ross Anderson on Palladium and TCPA In-Reply-To: <5.1.1.6.0.20020627123912.01be79f8at_private> Ross Anderson posted a FAQ on TCPA and Palladium on his website: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/rja14/tcpa-faq.html As far as I can tell the FAQ is based on his paper presented at the conference on Open Source Software Economics in Toulouse on the 20th June. The paper can be downloaded from this URL: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/ftp/users/rja14/toulouse.pdf Although his analysis is slightly biased (his main premise being that content providers, given the DRM tools proposed by TCPA and Palladium, will try to screw the users as much as possible), I tend to agree with the questions he raises. We need more checks and balances in the proposed technical solution, so that users, content providers, and computer companies (both HW and SW) can reach an equilibrium. As it stand now, TCPA looks like a conspiracy between computer companies and content companies, all against thieves, I mean computer users. Furthermore, I am very curious to know the reasoning behind the timing of Microsoft's Palladium announcement. It might just be an attempt to preempt the SSSCA/CBDTPA(?) before it is made into law, by offering a computer industry-backed solution to the complaints of the content industry. Mihai Mihai Christodorescu -- mihaiat_private - http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~mihai --------------------------------------------------------------------------- The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends. - Friedrich Nietzsche --------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Feed the machine that burns in your head. -- --- To: declanat_private From: sorgeat_private Subject: Microsoft's Palladium Date: Fri, 28 Jun 2002 00:55:07 -0400 that's scary. Fear of Big Brother in Microsoft technology http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/06/26/1023864604750.html --- From: "Frawley, Alfred C." <afrawleyat_private> To: "'Declan McCullagh'" <declanat_private> Subject: FW: I Told You So Date: Fri, 28 Jun 2002 11:00:52 -0400 Hi Declan: you might find this of moderate interest (posted on a crypto thread) [...] http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20020627.html JUNE 27, 2002 I Told You So Alas, a Couple of Bob's Dire Predictions Have Come True By Robert X. Cringely Just over three years ago I wrote a column titled "Cooking the Books: How Clever Accounting Techniques are Used to Make Internet Millionaires." It explained how telecom companies were using accounting tricks to create revenue where there really was none. Take another look at the column (it's among the links on the "I Like It" page), and think of Worldcom with its recently revealed $3.7 billion in hidden expenses. Then last August, I wrote a column titled "The Death of TCP/IP: Why the Age of Internet Innocence is Over." Take a look at that column, too, and think about Microsoft's just-revealed project called Palladium. The end is near. Sometimes I'd rather be wrong, but it's a no-brainer to guess that accountancy, which has apparently become something of an art form or interpretive dance, could have a dark side. And you'll never lose money betting for Microsoft and against Microsoft's competitors and customers. Let's concentrate on the Microsoft story. Last August, I wrote of a rumor that Microsoft wanted to replace TCP/IP with a proprietary protocol -- a protocol owned by Microsoft -- that it would tout as being more secure. Actually, the new protocol would likely be TCP/IP with some of the reserved fields used as pointers to proprietary extensions, quite similar to Vines IP, if you remember that product from Banyan Systems. I called it TCP/MS in the column. How do you push for the acceptance of such a protocol? First, make the old one unworkable by placing millions of exploitable TCP/IP stacks out on the Net, ready-to-use by any teenage sociopath. When the Net slows or crashes, the blame would not be assigned to Microsoft. Then ship the new protocol with every new copy of Windows, and install it with every Windows Update over the Internet. Zero to 100 million copies could happen in less than a year. This week, Microsoft announced Palladium through an exclusive story in Newsweek written by Steven Levy, who ought to have known better. Palladium is the code name for a Microsoft project to make all Internet communication safer by essentially pasting a digital certificate on every application, message, byte, and machine on the Net, then encrypting the data EVEN INSIDE YOUR COMPUTER PROCESSOR. Palladium compatible hardware (presumably chipsets and motherboards) will come from both AMD and Intel, and the software will, of course, come from Microsoft. That software is what I had dubbed TCP/MS. The point of all this is simple. It may actually make the Internet somewhat safer. But the real purpose of this stuff, I fear, is to take technology owned by nobody (TCP/IP) and replace it with technology owned by Redmond. That's taking the Internet and turning it into MSN. Oh, and we'll all have to buy new computers. This is diabolical. If Microsoft is successful, Palladium will give Bill Gates a piece of every transaction of any type while at the same time marginalizing the work of any competitor who doesn't choose to be Palladium-compliant. So much for Linux and Open Source, but it goes even further than that. So much for Apple and the Macintosh. It's a militarized network architecture only Dick Cheney could love. Ironically, Microsoft says they will reveal Palladium's source code, which is little more than a head feint toward the Open Source movement. Nobody at Microsoft is saying anything about giving the ownership of that source code away or of allowing just anyone to change it. Under Palladium as I understand it, the Internet goes from being ours to being theirs. The very data on your hard drive ceases to be yours because it could self-destruct at any time. We'll end up paying rent to use our own data! Can you tell I think this is a bad idea? What bothers me the most about it is not just that we are being sold a bill of goods by the very outfit responsible for making possible most current Internet security problems. "The world is a fearful place (because we allowed it to be by introducing vulnerable designs followed by clueless security initiatives) so let us fix it for you." Yeah, right. Yet Palladium has a very real chance of succeeding. How long until only code signed by Microsoft will be allowed to run on the platform? It seems that Microsoft is trying to implement a system that will enable them, once and for all, to charge game console-like royalties to software developers. But how will this stop the "I just e-mailed you a virus" problem? How does this stop my personal information being sucked out of my PC using cookies? It won't. Solving those particular problems is not Palladium's real purpose, which is to increase Microsoft's market share. It is a marketing concept that will be sold as the solution to a problem. It won't really work. Let's understand here that not all Microsoft products are bad and many are very good. Those products serve real customer needs and do so with genuine purpose, not marketing artifice. But Palladium isn't that way at all. This is NOT about making things better for the user. This is about removing the ability for the end user to make decisions about how his or her computer functions. It is an effort by Microsoft to take literal ownership of Internet technology, Microsoft's "embrace and extend" strategy applied for the Nth time, though on a grander scale than we've ever seen before. While there is some doubt that the PC will survive a decade from now as a product category, nobody is suggesting the Internet will do anything but grow and grow over that time. Palladium assures that whatever hardware is running on the network of 10 years from now, it will be generating revenue for Microsoft. There is nothing wrong with Microsoft having a survival strategy, but plenty wrong with presenting it as some big favor they are doing for us and for the world. What's saddest about this story is that it could be positive. The world is a dangerous place and finding ways to make people responsible for what they do on the Net is probably good, not bad. I just don't think we have the right people on the job. --- ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Like Politech? Make a donation here: http://www.politechbot.com/donate/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------
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