Generally, this theory [that the international banking interests are planning to eventually subvert the independence of the United States of America by subordinating national sovereignty to the United Nations] maintains a nexus to capitalism, materialism, transnational corporations, and based on behaviours of groups like Big four record labels, Supermajor, Trusted Computing Group, and advancement of technology like Spychips.

After faithfully attending the last few TCG member meetings I’ve finally got an invite to the secret initiation ceremony that involves swearing on the holy Zune (ebook edition) while sacrificing a virgin installation of Windows 95 and swearing allegiance to the Dark Lord Billigatius…

Their full YouTube channel can be found here.

Don’t forget also to sign up to TrustedComputin too, which is quite active with all the latest Trusted Computing headlines.

The basic problem, from some Linux kernel developers’ points of view at least, is that TXT can be used to inplement mostly uncrackable Digital Rights Management.

From my own point of view, TXT enables a Dynamic Root of Trust Measurement (DRTM) which allows a PC to dynamically establish a root of trust after it has started. If you accept the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) as a good thing, DRTM makes it even better. If you swap a graphics card, for instance, with a standard Static Root of Trust Measurement, the system measurement can change and you can lose access to all your TPM-protected data. With DRTM enabled through TXT, the measurement stays the same, and you can use your TPM as before.

The article makes a very good argument, and is well worth the read, although the comments are the usual paranoid nonsense.

The thrust of the argument is that most IT systems is riddled with vulnerabilities, but secure software for aircraft and military systems follow a process that prevents these problems. However, there is no mention of relative costs in money or effort, or that I presume most if not all of these secure systems are off the public internet.

He sums up with:

People are demanding a solution to the economic mess. Why aren’t they demanding a solution to the security mess? Now that there is proof that it is practical to create and deploy certified high-robustness solutions, it’s time to hold software providers to a higher standard.

I do feel he ignores a number of important issues, but it’s a good read nonetheless.

Thankfully, the TCG’s Storage Working Group thought of that, and techniques to alleviate the problem include a way to back up the data securely, and the ability to set a second administrator emergency password.

In 2007 the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) v1.2 specification was submitted to JTC1 (ISO/IEC Joint Committee 1), and in July 2008 the member countries voted to approve it as an ISO/IEC standard. The comments resolution phase finished in October 2008, and publication has been slated for the first half of 2009.

The blog post highlights why the TPM is important, but instead I’d just like to pass on my congratulations to the people who worked on it. I’m always in awe of these guys and gals, and I’m always impressed how they can all agree (or agree to disagree as is often the case!) and produce such as solid specification at the end of the day.

“I’m surprised that more enterprise IT managers are not using these technologies. When organizations lose data” – whether through thievery or mishap – “they face multimillion-dollar exposure to fines, legal fees, diminished market value, settlement payments, and impaired goodwill. With increased notebook usage, important corporate assets are now wandering all over the globe. These assets can be protected. IT managers can simply turn on the TPM in their client PCs, and they’ve taken the first step toward preventing network breaches that lead to data loss. Adding hardware-based self-encrypting storage, which is becoming widely available in enterprise notebooks, makes an even stronger security solution for minimal money and effort.”

With over 50,000 disk drives per day being decommissioned or reused, the loss of data is almost inevitable, as regular stories of auctioned systems having still-accessible confidential data witness.

However, help is at hand in the form of the TCG and the standards the members have created for self-encrypting storage based in the storage hardware, not on the platform software. This has multiple benefits, such as always-on, keys are not exposed in the operating system, and wiping the key store renders the contents instantly erased.

The TCG is not just present in disk drives, but also almost all enterprise PCs are now shipped with a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) that acts as a hardware password vault, and software applications are available to enable individual or corporate-wide maintainance of these TPMs. As Derek E Brink, a research fellow for IT Security at Aberdeen, says:

“Aberdeen’s research shows that a high percentage of trusted computing-ready devices and infrastructure already exists within the enterprise, but overall awareness about the benefits of trusted computing is still relatively low. The most compelling finding from our recent study is that users who have activated their existing trusted computing infrastructure actually have superior capabilities at security governance, risk management and compliance.”

The full press release PDF may be read on the official Trusted Computing Group web site, or in plain HTML here.

My father worked there, and now I’m working with people from an organisation spawned from there on cryptography for peaceful purposes. They are looking for donations, so please join me in sending a few pounds, yen, dollars or whatever you can afford to:

Donate more than £50 and they’ll send you a T-shirt. Thanks!