Why we don't trust Microsoft (1 Viewer)

Martin

Senior Member
Dec 31, 2000
56,913
#1
Richard Stallman is a long term Linux developer and security expert. This is his short introduction to "trusted computing", the new concept by Microsoft, Intel and other vendors to work together on a computer framework that will impose concrete limitations on the user.

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Can you trust your computer?
Monday October 21, 2002 - [ 04:14 PM GMT ]
Topics: Migration , Windows , Utilities

-By Richard Stallman -
Who should your computer take its orders from? Most people think their computers should obey them, not obey someone else. With a plan they call "trusted computing," large media corporations (including the movie companies and record companies), together with computer companies such as Microsoft and Intel, are planning to make your computer obey them instead of you. Proprietary programs have included malicious features before, but this plan would make it universal.

Proprietary

software means, fundamentally, that you don't control what it does; you can't study the source code, or change it. It's not surprising that clever businessmen find ways to use their control to put you at a disadvantage. Microsoft has done this several times: one version of Windows was designed to report to Microsoft all the software on your hard disk; a recent "security" upgrade in Windows Media Player required users to agree to new restrictions. But Microsoft is not alone: the KaZaa music-sharing software is designed so that KaZaa's business partner can rent out the use of your computer to their clients. These malicious features are often secret, but even once you know about them it is hard to remove them, since you don't have the source code.

In the past, these were isolated incidents. "Trusted computing" would make it pervasive. "Treacherous computing" is a more appropriate name, because the plan is designed to make sure your computer will systematically disobey you. In fact, it is designed to stop your computer from functioning as a general-purpose computer. Every operation may require explicit permission.

The technical idea underlying treacherous computing is that the computer includes a digital encryption and signature device, and the keys are kept secret from you. (Microsoft's version of this is called "palladium.") Proprietary programs will use this device to control which other programs you can run, which documents or data you can access, and what programs you can pass them to. These programs will continually download new authorization rules through the Internet, and impose those rules automatically on your work. If you don't allow your computer to obtain the new rules periodically from the Internet, some capabilities will automatically cease to function.

Of course, Hollywood and the record companies plan to use treacherous computing for "DRM" (Digital Restrictions Management), so that downloaded videos and music can be played only on one specified computer. Sharing will be entirely impossible, at least using the authorized files that you would get from those companies. You, the public, ought to have both the freedom and the ability to share these things. (I expect that someone will find a way to produce unencrypted versions, and to upload and share them, so DRM will not entirely succeed, but that is no excuse for the system.)

Making sharing impossible is bad enough, but it gets worse. There are plans to use the same facility for email and documents -- resulting in email that disappears in two weeks, or documents that can only be read on the computers in one company.

Imagine if you get an email from your boss telling you to do something that you think is risky; a month later, when it backfires, you can't use the email to show that the decision was not yours. "Getting it in writing" doesn't protect you when the order is written in disappearing ink.

Imagine if you get an email from your boss stating a policy that is illegal or morally outrageous, such as to shred your company's audit documents, or to allow a dangerous threat to your country to move forward unchecked. Today you can send this to a reporter and expose the activity. With treacherous computing, the reporter won't be able to read the document; her computer will refuse to obey her. Treacherous computing becomes a paradise for corruption.

Word processors such as Microsoft Word could use treacherous computing when they save your documents, to make sure no competing word processors can read them. Today we must figure out the secrets of Word format by laborious experiments in order to make free word processors read Word documents. If Word encrypts documents using treacherous computing when saving them, the free software community won't have a chance of developing software to read them -- and if we could, such programs might even be forbidden by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Programs that use treacherous computing will continually download new authorization rules through the Internet, and impose those rules automatically on your work. If Microsoft, or the U.S. government, does not like what you said in a document you wrote, they could post new instructions telling all computers to refuse to let anyone read that document. Each computer would obey when it downloads the new instructions. Your writing would be subject to 1984-style retroactive erasure. You might be unable to read it yourself.

You might think you can find out what nasty things a treacherous computing application does, study how painful they are, and decide whether to accept them. It would be short-sighted and foolish to accept, but the point is that the deal you think you are making won't stand still. Once you come depend on using the program, you are hooked and they know it; then they can change the deal. Some applications will automatically download upgrades that will do something different -- and they won't give you a choice about whether to upgrade.

Today you can avoid being restricted by proprietary software by not using it. If you run GNU/Linux or another free operating system, and if you avoid installing proprietary applications on it, then you are in charge of what your computer does. If a free program has a malicious feature, other developers in the community will take it out, and you can use the corrected version. You can also run free application programs and tools on non-free operating systems; this falls short of fully giving you freedom, but many users do it.

Treacherous computing puts the existence of free operating systems and free applications at risk, because you may not be able to run them at all. Some versions of treacherous computing would require the operating system to be specifically authorized by a particular company. Free operating systems could not be installed. Some versions of treacherous computing would require every program to be specifically authorized by the operating system developer. You could not run free applications on such a system. If you did figure out how, and told someone, that could be a crime.

There are proposals already for U.S. laws that would require all computers to support treacherous computing, and to prohibit connecting old computers to the Internet. The CBDTPA (we call it the Consume But Don't Try Programming Act) is one of them. But even if they don't legally force you to switch to treacherous computing, the pressure to accept it may be enormous. Today people often use Word format for communication, although this causes several sorts of problems (see http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html). If only a treacherous computing machine can read the latest Word documents, many people will switch to it, if they view the situation only in terms of individual action (take it or leave it). To oppose treacherous computing, we must join together and confront the situation as a collective choice.

For further information about treacherous computing, see http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/rja14/tcpa-faq.html.

To block treacherous computing will require large numbers of citizens to organize. We need your help! The Electronic Frontier Foundation (www.eff.org) and Public Knowledge (www.publicknowledge.org) are campaigning against treacherous computing, and so is the FSF-sponsored Digital Speech Project (www.digitalspeech.org). Please visit these Web sites so you can sign up to support their work.

You can also help by writing to the public affairs offices of Intel, IBM, HP/Compaq, or anyone you have bought a computer from, explaining that you don't want to be pressured to buy "trusted" computing systems so you don't want them to produce any. This can bring consumer power to bear. If you do this on your own, please send copies of your letters to the organizations above.

Postscripts:

1. The GNU Project distributes the GNU Privacy Guard, a program that implements public-key encryption and digital signatures, which you can use to send secure and private email. It is useful to explore how GPG differs from treacherous computing, and see what makes one helpful and the other so dangerous.

When someone uses GPG to send you an encrypted document, and you use GPG to decode it, the result is an unencrypted document that you can read, forward, copy, and even re-encrypt to send it securely to someone else. A treacherous computing application would let you read the words on the screen, but would not let you produce an unencrypted document that you could use in other ways. GPG, a free software package, makes security features available to the users; they use it. Treacherous computing is designed to impose restrictions on the users; it uses them.

2. Microsoft presents Palladium as a security measure, and claims that it will protect against viruses, but this claim is evidently false. A presentation by Microsoft Research in October 2002 stated that one of the specifications of Palladium is that existing operating systems and applications will continue to run; therefore, viruses will continue to be able to do all the things that they can do today.

When Microsoft speaks of "security" in connection with Palladium, they do not mean what we normally mean by that word: protecting your machine from things you do not want. They mean protecting your copies of data on your machine from access by you in ways others do not want. A slide in the presentation listed several types of secrets Palladium could be used to keep, including "third party secrets" and "user secrets" -- but it put "user secrets" in quotation marks, recognizing that this is not what Palladium is really designed for.

The presentation made frequent use of other terms that we frequently associate with the context of security, such as "attack," "malicious code," "spoofing," as well as "trusted." None of them means what it normally means. "Attack" doesn't mean someone trying to hurt you, it means you trying to copy music. "Malicious code" means code installed by you to do what someone else doesn't want your machine to do. "Spoofing" doesn't mean someone fooling you, it means you fooling Palladium. And so on.

3. A previous statement by the Palladium developers stated the basic premise that whoever developed or collected information should have total control of how you use it. This would represent a revolutionary overturn of past ideas of ethics and of the legal system, and create an unprecedented system of control. The specific problems of these systems are no accident; they result from the basic goal. It is the goal we must reject.

Copyright 2002 Richard Stallman
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted without royalty in any medium provided this notice is preserved.
 

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Martin

Martin

Senior Member
Dec 31, 2000
56,913
  • Thread Starter
  • Thread Starter #6
    If you buy a computer from Intel in 3 years, you'll be restricted to running Windows on it. Nothing else will work. When you run Windows, your personal freedom will be limited, you no longer decide which documents you open, which files you copy, file sharing will be impossible, access to the Internet will be regulated by Microsoft and partner vendors. If you copy an mp3 from a friend, you won't be able to open it cause it will be bound to that person's computer. If you send a document to a friend, he won't be able to open it because it's digitally signed to your computer. Unless the big companies that want to take care of you authorize you to do it, that is.

    Pretty much the story in a nutshell.
     
    OP
    Martin

    Martin

    Senior Member
    Dec 31, 2000
    56,913
  • Thread Starter
  • Thread Starter #8
    That's hard to say for now. This is based on statements made by Microsoft mostly. However they have everyone watching their moves now, a lot of people were outraged by these words so it looks like they're changing their statement now. I think it goes towards toning down these new "features", they will be incorporated gradually. So in 10 years, if MS get their way, it very well may be. But in the near future, I don't think it's going to be that extreme.

    It definitely is moving in that direction though, whatever the extent. Already you have to "activate" your MS producst like Windows and Office, people are saying they use Windows to collect information about you, record what programs you have, what files you have etc.
     

    Dj Juve

    Senior Member
    Jul 12, 2002
    9,597
    #9
    Can't we sue or something man?
    cause this is like invasion of private property.

    Plus anyways, i have Athlon so, i can rest safely at night
     
    OP
    Martin

    Martin

    Senior Member
    Dec 31, 2000
    56,913
  • Thread Starter
  • Thread Starter #10
    That's exactly what it is, the general tendency in the US these days is to limit your personal freedoms, that includes computing. Microsoft is insanely powerful so it takes a bit to rock the boat. I don't know what will happen with this, whether they will get what they want. However, if you're outside the US, MS power is greatly reduced, the EU won't take as much shit as the US government will, while Linux is big in Asia.

    If we assume that Intel is working with MS on this, AMD is the countermeasure.
     

    Anders

    Senior Member
    Dec 13, 2002
    3,134
    #14
    But this is like comitting suicide Bill! What is this... tired of money???

    Silly.

    Yay! Now I love my Athlon even more :extatic:
     

    mikhail

    Senior Member
    Jan 24, 2003
    9,576
    #16
    ++ [ originally posted by -CSD- ] ++
    tired of money? now thats a preddy fukked up state of mind to be in :D
    Isn't there a line in the Simpsons for this?

    Jay Sherman: How do you sleep at night?
    Ranier Wolfcastle: On top of a pile of money, with many beautiful ladies.
     

    mikhail

    Senior Member
    Jan 24, 2003
    9,576
    #19
    Software giant to include 'active protection'
    Wednesday, February 25, 2004 Posted: 3:33 PM EST (2033 GMT)

    SAN FRANCISCO, California (AP) -- Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates, whose company's software is often derided for being buggy and vulnerable to hackers, showed off planned features for shoring up its programs and heading off cyberattacks.

    Progress is being made against viruses, network attacks and sloppy code that make systems vulnerable, said Gates. But, he added, a lot more work remains.

    "The people who attack these systems are getting more and more sophisticated," Gates said Tuesday. "For every time we take a type of attack and eliminate that as an opportunity, they move up to a whole new level. That's not an unending process -- we can make it dramatically difficult."

    Speaking to thousands of security experts at the RSA Conference, Gates said Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing Initiative -- unveiled two years ago after several embarrassing Windows flaws were exploited by viruses and hackers -- is paying off.

    http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/biztech/02/25/microsoft.rsa.ap/index.html

    ------------------------------------------------------
    Looks like the Treacherous Computing initiative isn't going away. :(
     

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