Lockdown – The coming war on general-purpose computing (2012)
boingboing.net
boingboing.net
In some sense, I rather take solace in the fact that hacks, attacks, cracks, leaks, etc. are continuing to happen regularly --- they are a sign that there is still some freedom left in society. "Imagine a world without crime" is a somewhat common phrase used by some, and if you actually do, you will realise that it would pretty much be the world of Orwell's 1984: there is no crime because there is no more freedom of thought nor action; everything has become under the control of some central authority.
This goes beyond computers, although they will be a large part of it; it's really a general war on freedom.
We are not there yet, but I personally fear, that all it would take is the political realization, that the ability to predict behavior leads to more efficient governance.
Technology has the ability to "set us free" or "enslave us", but it's up to the people to decide which they want in a democracy. In the current conservative climate, we're certainly heading more toward dystopia, racing rapidly to make some of the darker cyberpunk come true.
And turning the world into farms.
What do you see as pros and cons?
on the downside, look at how they live.
I'm afraid this comment isn't up to HN standards, but i've always thought the teleological end of humanity was something that resembles an ant colony more than pack wolves, i'm not sure there's anything to be done to avoid it.
It's also funny how "ant colony" seems to be the direction of both the now deceased USSR-style socialism and modern capitalism -- with elites on top, total surveillance, and everything, just with different names.
> Feudalism is one of the oldest. It may appear to be rare nowadays, but some philosophers and historians have called it the “most natural” of human societies, simply because it cropped up in so many places throughout the millennia -- everywhere, in fact, that metallurgy and agriculture combined to let close-knit groups establish and enforce inherited aristocracies.
the rainforest itself is incredibly productive, although not in a monocultural way.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/07/the-great...
In short, they identified easily manipulated people by analyzing Facebook profiles, and manipulated them through Facebook ads. For me this is like a real-life botnet. The laws say 1 person, 1 vote, so why not manipulate the person to vote the way "we" want them. In a big-data way, targeting swing states...
I think this strongly conflates many issues. First of all, WannaCry spreads through a weakness in Microsoft's SMB implementation. Such a weakness can occur in both walled-garden and open systems.
Secondly, sandboxing, besides improving security, can increase our freedom: we get to decide which application can access what data. In the current model used on many computers, an application can access all user files and exfiltrate usage patterns, address books, etc. WannaCry would be pretty ineffective if it was sandboxed and could not encrypt user's files. Now such malware (as we've seen with the Handbrake malware) can upload all your passwords, browser history, etc.
Sandboxing is fine. It should be up to the user what we decide to sandbox and what not.
(I do agree that society is moving towards being totalitarian. Or at least, making itself extremely vulnerable to totalitarianism.)
True - but isn't the latter exactly the problem we're facing? That we increasingly don't get to decide whether we want that sandbox or not?
Unfortunately, the nature of the world is such that if you allow users to control sandboxing, the next wave of attacks will come from applications that kindly ask users to disable the sandbox because of $reasons.
You can make the best locks in the world and it's all for nothing if every time an attacker knocks on the door the user opens it up and lets them in, but the solution can't be to weld shut every door.
Security commonly fails at UX. We could do better.
But at some point, if you ask the user "should this app access your private information" and the user says yes, that's what needs to happen, and the user needs to learn when to say no.
Linux evades a huge amount of virus and phishing just because you have to `chmod +x` stuff before running, for example. A "Software wants to do nasty stuff. Allow | Disallow" prompt just does not make it.
Also, users will want to piece the sandbox some times, do not make it an all or nothing situation. Make giving common permissions easy, rare permission hard, and give fine grained control over them.
I have mixed feelings about what to do. On the one hand, there would be merit in requiring a professional license for programmers like in other engineering fields - a lot of the mess in our industry could be removed if at least some jobs would require a license, which would give both a recognized right to refuse work based on ethical issues (backed by professional association) and the liability in case you fucked up badly and people died.
On the other hand, I fear the day when Turing-complete systems will get regulated and require a (probably expensive) license to use. Like many others here, I benefited a lot from being able to tinker with computers and programming languages in my teenage years, before I had access to formal education on the topic. I would like my children to have the same chance.
In a way, my feelings are reflected on a smaller scale in the way I feel about sandboxing. On the one hand, I appreciate the idea of isolation and don't like user-hostile software to be able to do whatever it wants on my system. On the other hand, I'd love to have the right to breach the sandbox myself and mess with software running on it. On Windows I still can alter GUI elements of running applications; try that on unrooted Android.
If it was just about security vs. freedom, then the problem would be relatively easy; some compromise could be reached (e.g. expanded definition of "life-critical" systems which would require licenses, and also hopefully licenses for jobs requiring use of personally identifiable information). As it is, there are other selfish/malicious actors in play - like music/movie industry pushing for DRM, corporations fighting for their walled gardens, etc. It'll be hard to navigate this problem space.
Right, and we all believe that the Volkswagon debacle really was some nefarious programmer doing it without any knowledge of management.
I'm tired of developers getting blamed for this shit, put the blame squarely where it belongs, on the people with the money who are making such decisions.
Management is ultimately responsible for the overall culture. However, bad cultures find plenty of eager employees. We are talking about skilled people able to find job elsewhere if the ethics was consideration - we are not talking about uneducated dudes having no choice.
"I'm sorry, I can't do that, it's against my professional oath"
"That violates the software guild bylaws."
"I can't do that, I'd lose my license!"
Lawyers, accountants and other real professionals answer to higher principles than their boss.
One relevant "professional association" which comes to mind is the IEEE, which is actually pro-copyright/IP/DRM. Make of that what you will.
Knowing history that's usually what they get. WannaCry used an OS vulnerability that would have existed regardless of how locked down user space is.
Obviously really different issues, but the resolution was that the phishing scam was shut down in short order because it relied on Google for OAuth and they turned the app off and revoked the credentials.
1 - http://gizmodo.com/a-huge-and-dangerously-convincing-google-...
"So when I get into a car—a computer that I put my body into—with my hearing aid—a computer I put inside my body—I want to know that these technologies are not designed to keep secrets from me, or to prevent me from terminating processes on them that work against my interests."
Indeed.
Five years down the line, though, and I'm no longer sure that "We haven't lost yet," as the closing paragraph puts it.
You're also not forced to use Google's Chrome Web Store (except on Windows with the official distribution of Chrome).
On top of that, Chromebooks are mostly used in an education environment where they are in fact locked down to Chrome OS for specific email address domains. Then the domain administrator can conveniently switch it into a brick.
General purpose computing is dependent on 2 things : ability to run your own programs AND the ability to lie about that fact to the network. Without the second the first is useless.
Google understands this subtle point, but it appears most people do not. So Google is exploiting our ignorance here.
When the network becomes free, all will be lost.
That's what I'm guessing anyway.
It's for good reason that Tech Solidarity and other security-conscious organizations recommend using iOS and Chromebooks where possible: https://techsolidarity.org/resources/basic_security.htm
Of course, we must fight tooth and nail against any regulations that would restrict access to general-purpose computing, or put limits on connecting a general-purpose computer to the Internet. But it's important to remember that there are absolutely legitimate reasons to use and recommend locked-down machines, and that the most technically adept of us will use a combination of both categories of computing device in our lives.
I like to think of a general purpose computer like a giant truck: great if you like that kind of thing, but not for everyone.
Using various Ubuntu-based distros and Free Software apps over the last 8 years, I have never felt like any program was overstepping the boundaries.
http://download.com? Now owned by CNET, and full of sketchiness.
Or maybe you like http://freeware.com? Oh, snap, it's down and parked by a squatter now.
Or maybe an open source site? How about https://sourceforge.net? How'd that work out?
Could start by installing Java, let's see, oracle.com, click, ah, what's this? It's installing the Yahoo! browser toolbar by default??!!!
Yeah. Curated.
And even if you do manage to get a curated software store without lockdown that has a business model, it's not clear to me how you solve the problem of people sharing passwords with sketchy family members and friends who then install hidden software that secretly, behind their back, stalks them without so much as an informational prompt or opt-in.
No, I think there are good reasons for having devices somewhat locked down, especially when it's being done for the sake of the end user.
And of course Steam, GoG, and the HumbleStore provide curated repositories for proprietary games on many platforms.
I guess that's a fair use case for locking down the OS.
But when it comes to various sites giving you bad software, how is locking the device and not giving the user control supposed to help? Any security measures like sandboxing could exist on a device without taking control from the user. And while installing zero programs is pretty secure, the user could make that choice without a lockdown.
> So, which curated software store/repo do you prefer?
Ninite is quite good. Other comments already pointed out various linux repos that do a very good job. Also look at the iOS store for something that has pretty aggressive quality control, even if the rules aren't perfect. (While iOS is locked down, the store would work the same if it wasn't.)
Don't want to deal with the official repository you can easily host your own and provide a package that adds your own repo and serves the latest and greatest version of your software. Want a solution that targets multiple distros and bundles deps there is no snappy.
Preventing untrusted users from installing software is also a solved problem. Require the root password or simply don't let them use sudo.
If you give morons and bad people physical access your machine AND permission to install software it seems to me that you have put you in a bad place where no amount of lockdown can render you safe.
Rather than make the futile effort to render your situation tenable when we know it wont how about we continue to improve actually feasible use cases?
You get this security in exchange for all your personal data being uploaded to their servers (for advertising to try and change your behavior for their clients, and for storage for your government, and perhaps others), and Google getting to decide which apps you can run, and which apps developers can publish in the store.
As long as you stay aligned with the interests of the shareholders of the ad-surveillance company (and the government) it's a great deal.
That's the primary selling point. "We got this, don't look under the hood" Getting your own boot rom on there is a huge pain (I had to remove a screw off the main board) there were like ten steps I would never tell a non expert to attempt.
While you're correct that it's a pretty closed platform out of the box, you ultimately have more control over the platform than a typical x86 PC, if you go through the hoops of flashing your own Coreboot payload. The fact that it's hardware with official Coreboot support is notable, IMO.
[0] https://github.com/coreboot/coreboot/search?o=desc&q=google....
You can write and run arbitrary code on it, you can swap the OS, and you can even rebuild the firmware from source and flash it yourself (though at that point you will void the warranty since the firmware is in a position to cause hardware damage, but not for any of the other things). There is a local terminal emulator, and when you turn on developer mode you can have a local unix shell with mount and write access to removable disks, so you can image install media for an operating system. The boot firmware comes with SeaBIOS by default for the reason that Google (for whatever reason) wants you to be perfectly able to install bios-based operating systems as long as they're compatible with the hardware. If it's Linux, then any downstream hardware drivers involved are packaged in google's public kernel repositories, and if it's a userspace component, it's in the ChromiumOS repositories, where you can pull and build the entire operating system (aside from the pepper plugins for digital restrictions management and flash).
Seriously, try doing many of these things with a typical off-the-shelf Windows or Apple laptop and get back to me. On Windows laptops you need to jump through hoops to disable firmware features which prevent you from installing new operating systems, on Chromebooks it's well documented and has no effect on warranty or your ability to roll back the changes. Most (all?) windows laptops have no vendor-provided open source firmware, and most of them don't have even a third party one which works. To write an install disk on Windows, you need to install a third-party image burning application, and there's no guarantee that the firmware will even let you boot it. Many windows laptop manufacturers will either inconvenience or flat-out deny warranty claimants who have replaced the operating system on their laptop. Microsoft does not publish the source code of the NT kernel. Most Windows laptops contain at least one piece of hardware which is not adequately documented such that somebody could write a driver for it without reverse engineering.
Apple laptops are in some ways better, in some ways worse here. On the one hand, the firmware does not explicitly prevent you from booting third-party images, on the other hand, the firmware and hardware have undocumented behaviour which makes it exceedingly difficult to get most new operating systems to reliably boot and install on it. Usually even if yo u do manage to install and boot something, some important piece of hardware (the wireless chip, the display output multiplexer, the webcam, the touchpad) is either slightly or completely different from a documented counterpart, and takes months or years to be supported by anything except OS X and the first-party drivers on Windows. Darwin releases are usually eventually open source, Apple's compilers are partially open source, but also include several proprietary components. Most of the operating system libraries which weren't already available when they started are proprietary. Though on the plus side, you don't really need anything extra to write a boot disk for a third-party operating system. On the down, there is no provided firmware source code, and the system is sufficiently underdocumented that it's unlikely anyone will ever write an alternative firmware image for your given Apple laptop model.
The big cloud providers will also, over time, shape what's available in hardware in a way that won't benefit on-premise customers.
I think with Apple it's more about allowing the end user (the real end user, not the end user's boyfriend/girlfriend/wife/husband, child/sibling/parent, boss/teacher/roommate etc.) to have control over their own information.
In order to enforce this end user control, Apple needs to lock out rogue programs. It can't do so 100%, but it tries to get as close as reasonably possible. They try even harder with mobile devices, because mobile devices tend to be so personal and capture so much private information of one individual.
Apple has every reason to help your mom/dad/boss/school ensure that you don't misuse THEIR property.
Your perspective seems to be mostly unfounded speculation that doesn't hold water.
Donation link for those interested: https://eff.org/donate
Their communication with the donors is almost non-existential. Waited for like two weeks to receive an answer for them, had to ping them after two weeks, they've replied, but failed to answer my questions, which I pointed out and never received an answer, then they've sent me a t-shirt to a wrong country (got the address right, missed the country completely and I have no clue how that happened), so I had to ping them again and let them know that they've fucked up the country while sending me a package, to which they didn't reply, but a couple of days later sent me another email in which they claim to have sent another package to the right country. Meanwhile, my initial questions remain unanswered for about two or three months now and all I get from them is "another donation successfully charged" emails.
Any browser or App process has nothing good to do in ~/Library other than its own application support and prefs plist files (and the equivalent in Linux and Windows)
If an App needs to access any artifact in my $HOME it needs to be explicitly authorized for that specific one (e.g. I want to embed images in a presentation) by a UI element that is part of a the OS itself.
Right now, I might be running as root on my machine, because as soon as I'm 0wned, my whole life can be siphoned to some dodgy server on the net.
The author probably knows how complicated it's to write (he is a professional writer), and still manages to do it good enough to get some prizes for his work https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cory_Doctorow#Awards
The problem is not a lack of access to a general-purpose computer. The problem is the lack of control over the computers you're forced to use in order to manipulate their attached I/O devices such as lights, refrigerators, screens, speakers, insulin pumps, steering and brakes, Internet connections, etc.
Is it worse just because the computers running them are now more powerful?
Sure, you couldn't see the code in the microcontrollers in your old TV - the ones listening for IR signals and driving the LCD. But modern TVs do all of that and more; they have internet connections, some have cameras and microphones, etc.
And even if you couldn't see the code in your old pacemaker (which I would say was still a problem), your new one probably has wireless administration and firmware updates. Those likely have remotely exploitable security vulnerabilities[0], and even if you have one inside your body, you aren't allowed to look at the code yourself.
[0] https://www.engadget.com/2017/04/21/pacemaker-security-is-te...
This was an important enough consumer rights issue even before the invention of the internet - now that it can be done secretly and remotely, it's paramount.
Ironically one of the biggest problems with "Internet of Things" junk appliances is not that they run locked-down DRM-saddled operating systems, but that they run free ones like Linux.
Linux itself isn't a problem, but that they're often bundled with tragically out of date versions of everything and there's never any thought given to how to update them.
This malware incident is simply relating to a commercial operating system. Imagine when someone's hacked your lights by worming into the Linux install on the controller and demands $50 in Bitcoin to return control to you.
However the real problem is hardware level DRM implementation and non-open CPUs, which really mean that I cannot truly own my own personal computer
When I program, I am in portable environments (Pharo Smalltalk, Emacs with Common Lisp or Haskell) that more or less can sit on top of any general purpose OS.
If our government (I am in the USA) locks down computing devices to an extreme extent, then that will just screw up our economy and more well run tax jurisdictions (countries) will benefit.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20151027/10131232649/libra...
It's a matter of scale. You can do general electronics with some AA batteries. If you want to build a nuclear reactor, yeah there will be interest from others in your affairs.
That's been continuously true for some decades now. What might save us is capitalism in that the bean counters are not permitting $10 controllers for a toaster, those get the ten cent controllers. Also the cost of labor to program those is a limiter in that a mass market toaster with $50M of programming budget will be financially destroyed in the marketplace by a competitor spending $5K on "its a 60-180 second timer, nothing more".
An embedded swamp will form of $25K cars with expensive insecure software. Your car will get powned 1000x more often than your toaster even though the risk to your life is fairly similar.