Re: Dell to Add Security Chip to PCs
Peter Gutmann wrote: Neither. Currently they've typically been smart-card cores glued to the MB and accessed via I2C/SMB. and chips that typically have had eal4+ or eal5+ evaluations. hot topic in 2000, 2001 ... at the intel developer's forums and rsa conferences - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Dell to Add Security Chip to PCs
Erwann ABALEA wrote: I've read your objections. Maybe I wasn't clear. What's wrong in installing a cryptographic device by default on PC motherboards? I work for a PKI 'vendor', and for me, software private keys is a nonsense. How will you convice Mr Smith (or Mme Michu) to buy an expensive CC EAL4+ evaluated token, install the drivers, and solve the inevitable conflicts that will occur, simply to store his private key? You first have to be good to convice him to justify the extra depense. If a standard secure hardware cryptographic device is installed by default on PCs, it's OK! You could obviously say that Mr Smith won't be able to move his certificates from machine A to machine B, but more than 98% of the time, Mr Smith doesn't need to do that. Installing a TCPA chip is not a bad idea. It is as 'trustable' as any other cryptographic device, internal or external. What is bad is accepting to buy a software that you won't be able to use if you decide to claim your ownership... Palladium is bad, TCPA is not bad. Don't confuse the two. the cost of EAL evaluation typically has already been amortized across large number of chips in the smartcard market. the manufactoring costs of such a chip is pretty proportional to the chip size ... and the thing that drives chip size tends to be the amount of eeprom memory. in tcpa track at intel developer's forum a couple years ago ... i gave a talk and claimed that i had designed and significantly cost reduced such a chip by throwing out all features that weren't absolutely necessary for security. I also mentioned that two years after i had finished such a design ... that tcpa was starting to converge to something similar. the head of tcpa in the audience quiped that i didn't have a committee of 200 helping me with the design. - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Dell to Add Security Chip to PCs
In message [EMAIL PROTECTED], Dan Kaminsky writes: Uh, you *really* have no idea how much the black hat community is looking forward to TCPA. For example, Office is going to have core components running inside a protected environment totally immune to antivirus. How? TCPA is only a cryptographic device, and some BIOS code, nothing else. Does the coming of TCPA chips eliminate the bugs, buffer overflows, stack overflows, or any other way to execute arbitrary code? If yes, isn't that a wonderful thing? Obviously it doesn't (eliminate bugs and so on). TCPA eliminates external checks and balances, such as antivirus. As the user, I'm not trusted to audit operations within a TCPA-established sandbox. Antivirus is essentially a user system auditing tool, and TCPA-based systems have these big black boxes AV isn't allowed to analyze. Imagine a sandbox that parses input code signed to an API-derivable public key. Imagine an exploit encrypted to that. Can AV decrypt the payload and prevent execution? No, of course not. Only the TCPA sandbox can. But since AV can't get inside of the TCPA sandbox, whatever content is protected in there is quite conspicuously unprotected. It's a little like having a serial killer in San Quentin. You feel really safe until you realize...uh, he's your cellmate. I don't know how clear I can say this, your threat model is broken, and the bad guys can't stop laughing about it. I have no idea whether or not the bad guys are laughing about it, but if they are, I agree with them -- I'm very afriad that this chip will make matters worse, not better. With one exception -- preventing the theft of very sensitive user-owned private keys -- I don't think that the TCPA chip is solving the right problems. *Maybe* it will solve the problems of a future operating system architecture; on today's systems, it doesn't help, and probably makes matters worse. TCPA is a way to raise the walls between programs executing in different protection spaces. So far, so good. Now -- tell me the last time you saw an OS flaw that directly exploited flaws in conventional memory protection or process isolation? They're *very* rare. The problems we see are code bugs and architectural failures. A buffer overflow in a Web browser still compromises the browser; if the now-evil browser is capable of writing files, registry entries, etc., the user's machine is still capable of being turned into a spam engine, etc. Sure, in some new OS there might be restrictions on what such an application can do, but you can implement those restrictions with today's hardware. Again, the problem is in the OS architecture, not in the limitations of its hardware isolation. I can certainly imagine an operating system that does a much better job of isolating processes. (In fact, I've worked on such things; if you're interested, see my papers on sub-operating systems and separate IP addresses per process group.) But I don't see that TCPA chips add much over today's memory management architectures. Furthermore, as Dan points out, it may make things worse -- the safety of the OS depends on the userland/kernel interface, which in turn is heavily dependent on the complexity of the privileged kernel modules. If you put too much complex code in your kernel -- and from the talks I've heard this is exactly what Microsoft is planning -- it's not going to help the situation at all. Indeed, as Dan points out, it may make matters worse. Microsoft's current secure coding initiative is a good idea, and from what I've seen they're doing a good job of it. In 5 years, I wouldn't be at all surprised if the rate of simple bugs -- the buffer overflows, format string errors, race conditions, etc. -- was much lower in Windows and Office than in competing open source products. (I would add that this gain has come at a *very* high monetary cost -- training, code reviews, etc., aren't cheap.) The remaining danger -- and it's a big one -- is the architecture flaws, where ease of use and functionality often lead to danger. Getting this right -- getting it easy to use *and* secure -- is the real challenge. Nor are competing products immune; the drive to make KDE and Gnome (and for that matter MacOS X) as easy to use (well, easier to use) than Windows is likely to lead to the same downward security sprial. I'm ranting, and this is going off-topic. My bottom line: does this chip solve real problems that aren't solvable with today's technology? Other than protecting keys -- and, of course, DRM -- I'm very far from convinced of it. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves. --Prof. Steven M. Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Dell to Add Security Chip to PCs
Trei, Peter wrote: It could easily be leveraged to make motherboards which will only run 'authorized' OSs, and OSs which will run only 'authorized' software. And you, the owner of the computer, will NOT neccesarily be the authority which gets to decide what OS and software the machine can run. If you 'take ownership' as you put it, the internal keys and certs change, and all of a sudden you might not have a bootable computer anymore. Goodbye Linux. Goodbye Freeware. Goodbye independent software development. It would be a very sad world if this comes to pass. Yes it would, many governments are turning to Linux and other freeware. Many huge companies make heavy use of Linux and and freeware, suddenly losing this would have a massive effect on their bottom line and possibly enough to impact the economy as a whole. Independent software developers are a significant part of the economy as well, and most politicians do not want to associate themselves with the concept of hurting small business. Universities and other educational institutions will fight anything that resembles what you have described tooth and nail. To think that this kind of technology would be mandated by a government is laughable. Nor do I believe there will be any conspiracy on the part of ISPs to require to in order to get on the Internet. As it stands now most people are running 5+ year old computer and windows 98/me, I doubt this is going to change much because for most people, this does what they want (minus all the security vulnerabilities, but with NAT appliances those are not even that big a deal). There is no customer demand for this technology to be mandated, there is no reason why an ISP or vendor would want to piss off significant percentages of their clients in this way. The software world is becoming MORE open. Firefox and Openoffice are becoming legitimate in the eyes of government and businesses, Linux is huge these days, and the open source development method is being talked about in business mags, board rooms, and universities everywhere. The government was not able to get the Clipper chip passed and that was backed with the horror stories of rampant pedophilia, terrorism, and organized crime. Do you honestly believe they will be able to destroy open source, linux, independent software development, and the like with just the fear of movie piracy, mp3 sharing, and such? Do you really think they are willing to piss off large sections of the voting population, the tech segment of the economy, universities, small businesses, and the rest of the world just because the MPAA and RIAA don't like customers owning devices they do not control? It is entirely possibly that a machine like you described will be built, I wish them luck because they will need it. It is attempted quite often and yet history shows us that there is really no widespread demand for iOpeners, WebTV, and their ilk. I don't see customers demanding this, therefor there will probably not be much of a supply. Either way, there is currently a HUGE market for general use PCs that the end user controls, so I imagine there will always be companies willing to supply them. My primary fear regarding TCPA is the remote attestation component. I can easily picture Microsoft deciding that they do not like Samba and decide to make it so that Windows boxes simply cannot communicate with it for domain, filesystem, or authentication purposes. All they need do is require that the piece on the other end be signed by Microsoft. Heck they could render http agent spoofing useless if they decide to make it so that only IE could connect to ISS. Again though, doing so would piss off a great many of their customers, some of who are slowly jumping ship to other solutions anyway. -- Mark Allen Earnest Lead Systems Programmer Emerging Technologies The Pennsylvania State University smime.p7s Description: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature
Re: Dell to Add Security Chip to PCs
On Wed, Feb 02, 2005 at 05:30:33PM +0100, Erwann ABALEA wrote: Please stop relaying FUD. You have full control over your PC, even if this Please stop relaying pro-DRM pabulum. The only reason for Nagscab is restricting the user's rights to his own files. Of course there are other reasons for having crypto compartments in your machine, but the reason Dell/IBM is rolling them out is not that. one is equiped with a TCPA chip. See the TCPA chip as a hardware security module integrated into your PC. An API exists to use it, and one if the functions of this API is 'take ownership', which has the effect of erasing it and regenerating new internal keys. Really? How interesting. Please tell us more. -- Eugen* Leitl a href=http://leitl.org;leitl/a __ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE http://moleculardevices.org http://nanomachines.net pgpVsHbUYu02H.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Dell to Add Security Chip to PCs
On Wed, 2 Feb 2005, Dan Kaminsky wrote: Uh, you *really* have no idea how much the black hat community is looking forward to TCPA. For example, Office is going to have core components running inside a protected environment totally immune to antivirus. How? TCPA is only a cryptographic device, and some BIOS code, nothing else. Does the coming of TCPA chips eliminate the bugs, buffer overflows, stack overflows, or any other way to execute arbitrary code? If yes, isn't that a wonderful thing? Obviously it doesn't (eliminate bugs and so on). Since these components are going to be managing cryptographic operations, the well defined API exposed from within the sandbox will have arbitrary content going in, and opaque content coming out. Malware goes in (there's not a executable environment created that can't be exploited), sets up shop, has no need to be stealthy due to the complete blockage of AV monitors and cleaners, and does what it wants to the plaintext and ciphertext (alters content, changes keys) before emitting it back out the opaque outbound interface. I use cryptographic devices everyday, and TCPA is not different than the present situation. No better, no worse. -- Erwann ABALEA [EMAIL PROTECTED] - RSA PGP Key ID: 0x2D0EABD5 - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: Dell to Add Security Chip to PCs
Seeing as it comes out of the TCG, this is almost certainly the enabling hardware for Palladium/NGSCB. Its a part of your computer which you may not have full control over. Peter Trei Tyler Durden ANyone familiar with computer architectures and chips able to answer this question: That chip...is it likely to be an ASIC or is there already such a thing as a security network processor? (ie, a cheaper network processor that only handles security apps, etc...) -TD From: R.A. Hettinga [EMAIL PROTECTED] HOUSTON -- Dell Inc. today is expected to add its support to an industry effort to beef up desktop and notebook PC security by installing a dedicated chip that adds security and privacy-specific features, according to people familiar with its plans. Dell will disclose plans to add the security features known as the Trusted Computing Module on all its personal computers. Its support comes in the wake of similar endorsements by PC industry giants Advanced Micro Devices Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co., Intel Corp. and International Business Machines Corp. The technology has been promoted by an industry organization called the Trusted Computing Group. - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: Dell to Add Security Chip to PCs
On Wed, 2 Feb 2005, Trei, Peter wrote: Seeing as it comes out of the TCG, this is almost certainly the enabling hardware for Palladium/NGSCB. Its a part of your computer which you may not have full control over. Please stop relaying FUD. You have full control over your PC, even if this one is equiped with a TCPA chip. See the TCPA chip as a hardware security module integrated into your PC. An API exists to use it, and one if the functions of this API is 'take ownership', which has the effect of erasing it and regenerating new internal keys. -- Erwann ABALEA [EMAIL PROTECTED] - RSA PGP Key ID: 0x2D0EABD5 - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Dell to Add Security Chip to PCs
Erwann ABALEA wrote: On Wed, 2 Feb 2005, Trei, Peter wrote: Seeing as it comes out of the TCG, this is almost certainly the enabling hardware for Palladium/NGSCB. Its a part of your computer which you may not have full control over. Please stop relaying FUD. You have full control over your PC, even if this one is equiped with a TCPA chip. See the TCPA chip as a hardware security module integrated into your PC. An API exists to use it, and one if the functions of this API is 'take ownership', which has the effect of erasing it and regenerating new internal keys. So .. the way this works is that Dell Microsoft ship you a computer with lots of nice multimedia stuff on it. You take control of your chip by erasing it and regenerating keys, and then the multimedia software that you paid for no longer works? I'm just curious on this point. I haven't seen much to indicate that Microsoft and others are ready for a nymous, tradeable software assets world. iang -- News and views on what matters in finance+crypto: http://financialcryptography.com/ - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Dell to Add Security Chip to PCs
Uh, you *really* have no idea how much the black hat community is looking forward to TCPA. For example, Office is going to have core components running inside a protected environment totally immune to antivirus. Since these components are going to be managing cryptographic operations, the well defined API exposed from within the sandbox will have arbitrary content going in, and opaque content coming out. Malware goes in (there's not a executable environment created that can't be exploited), sets up shop, has no need to be stealthy due to the complete blockage of AV monitors and cleaners, and does what it wants to the plaintext and ciphertext (alters content, changes keys) before emitting it back out the opaque outbound interface. So, no FUD, you lose :) --Dan Erwann ABALEA wrote: On Wed, 2 Feb 2005, Trei, Peter wrote: Seeing as it comes out of the TCG, this is almost certainly the enabling hardware for Palladium/NGSCB. Its a part of your computer which you may not have full control over. Please stop relaying FUD. You have full control over your PC, even if this one is equiped with a TCPA chip. See the TCPA chip as a hardware security module integrated into your PC. An API exists to use it, and one if the functions of this API is 'take ownership', which has the effect of erasing it and regenerating new internal keys. - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
