Intel, DRM, security and trusted computing
Posted by Ken Y-N on September 7th, 2008 at 01:46pm
Here’s a rather interesting post I picked up from LiveJournal, written by djcapelis, a student at UCSD, but who works with Intel as an independent security researcher.
He says that in a couple of weeks he’ll be visiting Intel’s Hillsboro campus in Oregon to present a talk on why he thinks Intel should change tack on their current trusted platform-related activities, along the lines of those promoted by the Trusted Computing Group (TCG), as well as others.
He says security should not be about restrictions, but about real trust (whatever that really is) that allows the user to have more, not less. He says:
Security should be about making things secure that couldn’t be otherwise, not about restricting what people can do.
This sounds like the usual TPM equals DRM line, sadly. Trusted Platform Modules can either have a local owner or a remote owner; it is only the remote owner case that takes “rights” away from you, and in a corporate environment, that is important.
However, he then promises something very interesting:
I haven’t talked too much about the research we’ve been doing, but we’ve been working on this problem for a long time now and we’re finally at the stage where we’re trying to get the cat out of the bag.
So I’ll be discussing some of what we’ve been working on occasion from now on. I’ll also be talking about fived as that will start gearing up and becoming a real project over the next several months.
fived? What is that? I found the official web site, but “A Layer Five Daemon” in Python isn’t giving much away. I’ll keep my eyes open for further developments. Read the full story here.
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