On Fri, 14 Jul 2000, Bruce McCulley wrote:
> Anyone know how can I read the PIII CPU id from within Linux?
I think the subject came up on the Linux kernel mailing list when the whole
thing originally blew up in the press. Try a search there.
More generally, you could do it by writing a small assembly language
program as root. You'd have to check Intel's technical documentation to get
the opcodes and operands, but I imagine it wouldn't be that hard. Try their
developer website; I've used it in the past and it has been quite good.
> ... the CPU id would be a great advantage to be able to tell the bad guys
> from the good guys.
Not really.
For remote authentication, the CPU ID is absolutely, completely useless.
You have to trust the person sending the authentication request to send you
their ID. They could lie about it at any number of levels, either to mask
their identity or to steal someone else's. You might as well just ask, "Who
are you?" and trust them to type the truth into the input field.
It might be mildly useful for things like properly control, where you want
to check which CPU is which, and you can trust the environment (or, at least,
plug the CPU into a trusted environment).
It isn't particularly useful for software copy protection. You can
intercept an application-level request at any number of levels, even on the
local machine. And it makes moving the application to another machine a real
headache. It's been said before and I'll say it again: Copy protection
prevents the legitimate uses of a program from using it, while slowing down
the pirates not one iota.
> How do *YOU* know who your friends are? How do you know that letter or
> email came from the purported source?
Digital signatures and public/private key authentication. Certainly not a
CPU serial number.
> For that matter, how does NASDAQ or the DoD or Ma Bell know what machine
> is sending that system admin command to some critical firewall or router?
I can't speak for NASDAQ, but Ma Bell generally uses physical security
(trusting, for better or worse, in the difficulty of getting into one of their
COs), while the DoD uses strong cryptography hand-delivered by Government
Courier. The NSA moves several hundred *tons* of crypto key material every
year. And your average crypto key weights maybe a couple ounces. That's a
lot of crypto.
--
Ben Scott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
|"Ten thousand years wasn't enough... no lifetime was enough, unless you lived|
| it in such a way as to make it enough." -- Larry Niven, "Cautionary Tales" |
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