RE: Intel plans crypto-walled-garden for x86
I'd call this news announcement about Intel creating a run known good code facility about as credible as the joke that Otellini told his minions to go buy a copy of McAfee, and they didn't hear the copy of part. Noone will tolerate an Intel-moderated walled garden. Only Apple has customers with a bad enough case of stockholm syndrome to tolerate that sort of nonsense. Ian. -Original Message- From: owner-cryptogra...@metzdowd.com on behalf of Peter Gutmann Sent: Wed 15-Sep-10 2:03 AM To: cryptography@metzdowd.com; g...@toad.com Subject: Re: Intel plans crypto-walled-garden for x86 John Gilmore g...@toad.com writes: Let me guess -- to run anything but Windows, you'll soon have to jailbreak even laptops and desktop PC's? Naah, we're perfectly safe, like every other similar attempt after 5-10 years of effort and several hundred million dollars down the drain it'll come to nothing. I guess that's one silver lining of the corollary to We can't secure PCs against the bad guys, which is We can't 'secure' them against their owners either (with the rider ... although we can cause a lot of cost and inconvenience in trying). Peter. - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to majord...@metzdowd.com - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to majord...@metzdowd.com
Re: Intel plans crypto-walled-garden for x86
John Gilmore g...@toad.com writes: Let me guess -- to run anything but Windows, you'll soon have to jailbreak even laptops and desktop PC's? Naah, we're perfectly safe, like every other similar attempt after 5-10 years of effort and several hundred million dollars down the drain it'll come to nothing. I guess that's one silver lining of the corollary to We can't secure PCs against the bad guys, which is We can't 'secure' them against their owners either (with the rider ... although we can cause a lot of cost and inconvenience in trying). Peter. - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to majord...@metzdowd.com
Re: Intel plans crypto-walled-garden for x86
On 14/09/10 3:58 PM, John Gilmore wrote: http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2010/09/intels-walled-garden-plan-to-put-av-vendors-out-of-business.ars In describing the motivation behind Intel's recent purchase of McAfee for a packed-out audience at the Intel Developer Forum, Intel's Paul Otellini framed it as an effort to move the way the company approaches security from a known-bad model to a known-good model. Otellini went on to briefly describe the shift in a way that sounded innocuous enough--current A/V efforts focus on building up a library of known threats against which they protect a user, but Intel would live to move to a world where only code from known and trusted parties runs on x86 systems. The 'approved application' security model doesn't have to be ubiquitous anymore than the IOS application restrictions on iDevices extend to Mac OS X. Just yesterday I tripped across a media item saying Nvidia's Tegra 2 was being replace by an Intel Atom CE4100 (due to lack of performance for Full HD output). http://liliputing.com/2010/09/boxee-box-up-for-pre-order-nvidia-tegra-2-chip-replaced-with-intel-atom-ce4100.html If you look in the August 20th Business Week article http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-08-20/intel-after-mcafee-may-find-mobile-a-difficult-sell.html “As we look at all of the growth areas for Intel silicon, one of the consistent purchase criteria for both IT managers and consumer is security,” Renee James, the head of Intel’s software division, said in an interview yesterday. “This is a pretty natural step for us.” Growth areas for Intel silicon aren't in the PC market, which is saturated, Intel is producing silicon to compete with ARM CPUs in mobile and appliance computing. “The number of new security threats identified every month continues to rise,” Otellini said. “We have concluded that security has now become the third pillar of computing, joining energy-efficient performance and Internet connectivity in importance.” Energy-efficient implies portability. And: Intel will have to persuade customers they need security in non-PC electronics in much the same way it has convinced businesses and consumers that they required chips that speed computing tasks or ensure seamless wireless connections. Owning an antivirus software company is probably a good license to scaremonger. It's likely McAfee will suddenly start detecting threats and offering solutions. And: “As we move from a PC-centric era to a mobile-centric era, Intel needs to take advantage of every opportunity to expand its footprint into that marketplace.” The gist of the article is that the intent is for new Intel markets. In other words there's more to mobile and appliance computing than dreamed about in Mr. Gates philosophy, wherein Microsoft has moved in the antivirus market for PCs, haven't they? (Microsoft Security Essentials). In a saturated PC market the McAfee adoption rate has probably been stagnating or dropping signaling the need for new markets, hence the company being available for purchase. There doesn't appear to be enough information to state what Intel plans authoritatively, but it does bring into question Windows Mobile 7 adoption rates. Also when (web) content contains programming (javascript, etc.) you'd be faced with the necessity of certifying everyone's content (including blogs) or impinging on First Amendment uses of the Internet. It's unlikely the entire Internet would be transformed into commercial outlets for goods and services, while providing the means for walled city marketing in specific products appears the hot new thing. While vigilance to impingement of rights is always a good thing, there's evidence for the meat of the issue to fall on the other side of the razor's edge. - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to majord...@metzdowd.com
Re: Intel plans crypto-walled-garden for x86
On 9/13/10 at 8:58 PM, g...@toad.com (John Gilmore) wrote: Intel's Paul Otellini framed it as an effort to move the way the company approaches security from a known-bad model to a known-good model. Does that include monetary indemnity when the known-good turns out to be bad? I bet not. If we could know good, security would be a lot easier, but nobody has a clue how to actually achieve that knowledge. Let me guess -- to run anything but Windows, you'll soon have to jailbreak even laptops and desktop PC's? I expect Steve Jobs will get them to approve MacOS too. For the rest, there's always AMD. Cheers - Bill --- Bill Frantz| gets() remains as a monument | Periwinkle (408)356-8506 | to C's continuing support of | 16345 Englewood Ave www.pwpconsult.com | buffer overruns. | Los Gatos, CA 95032 - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to majord...@metzdowd.com
Re: Intel plans crypto-walled-garden for x86
On Sep 13, 2010, at 11:58 57PM, John Gilmore wrote: http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2010/09/intels-walled-garden-plan-to-put-av-vendors-out-of-business.ars In describing the motivation behind Intel's recent purchase of McAfee for a packed-out audience at the Intel Developer Forum, Intel's Paul Otellini framed it as an effort to move the way the company approaches security from a known-bad model to a known-good model. Otellini went on to briefly describe the shift in a way that sounded innocuous enough--current A/V efforts focus on building up a library of known threats against which they protect a user, but Intel would live to move to a world where only code from known and trusted parties runs on x86 systems. Let me guess -- to run anything but Windows, you'll soon have to jailbreak even laptops and desktop PC's? I've written a long blog post on this issue for the Concurring Opinions legal blog; see http://www.concurringopinions.com/archives/2010/09/a-new-threat-to-generativity.html --Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to majord...@metzdowd.com
