AMD Ryzen 6000 Series Mobile CPUs Feature Microsoft's Pluton Security
phoronix.com
phoronix.com
Also the CES didn't say anything about the next Threadrippers. :(
They did tease the next Zen architecture but not much details sadly.
But having Microsoft-designed hardware as a backdoor in my system? Absolutely not.
Sigh, less and less choice every day.
EDIT: What about this potential leak? https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/amd-to-release-ryzen...
Other than that, performance is plenty on a 5950x for all my imaginable use cases.
Reliability
ECC Memory
To protect against data corruption
Error Correction Code (ECC) memory corrects errors in your data
as it passes in and out of memory to ensure reliability for
critical applications.
I went with an Asus instead. The Asus manual says "ECC memory support varies by CPU" which is questionable for the 5700G APU I went with, and I didn't feel like digging to find out if harder to obtain ECC UDIMMs would be beneficial. (This was for a router / personal server. My workstation is ECC on a libreboot/KGPE)
Is it all-AMD? If it is, could you link to your setup? I am looking to build an all-AMD workstation this year and I need all the PCIe lanes that I can get.
https://libreboot.org/docs/hardware/kgpe-d16.html
https://www.coreboot.org/Board:asus/kgpe-d16
It's got 5 usable PCIe slots (including the physically-flipped "PIKE" one), I think a total of 40 PCIe lanes from both sockets that I believe you could theoretically split out with the maximum amount of bifurcation, since the BIOS is Free Software.
My new Ryzen build is for a personal server that resides at a lower trust level, and targets around 30W draw. B550 motherboards generally have around 28 PCIe lanes going to expansion slots (20 from the proc, 8 from the chipset). The best you can do for number of slots is to bifurcate the main "graphics" x16 into 3 x4 slots (maybe 4 with a non-APU) using a "VROC" card, but the BIOS has to support that (Gigabyte and Asus seem to generally, but check manual). I believe X570 motherboards have a few more PCIe lanes coming from the chipset.
If you really need more PCIe lanes, I hear Threadripper/EPYC is the way to go. But I don't have any personal experience. If you just need more PCIe slots, you can find PCIe x1 -> four slot switch-based splitters inexpensively on ebay/aliexpress.
> Last time I stuck a Kill-a-watt on it, I think it draws around 140W at idle
Another tangent (sorry!): do you know of good power meters that don't have to sit right at the outlet? I really need several but I want them to have extensions because I want to glue them on my wall and monitor them in real time, not having to stick my ass in the air while trying to crawl under my desk (where all the outlets are), just so I can see the measurements.
[0] it wants to connect to "cloud" as well, but works fine without giving it Internet access.
EDIT: miscalculates as rarely as a computer normally does
Thread Threadripper uses a massive amount of high quality silicon, Epyc has much better margins.
Supporting HEDT is living hell for Intel/AMD. You're often using all kinds of consumer hardware with otherwise enterprise grade gear. Addressing every little PCIe device issue and catering to a very very small market has very little ROI.
For something like Intel's HEDT then yes, you're absolutely correct. That involves HEDT-specific binning and it eats into Xeon-W profits very directly. But for Threadripper it's not nearly as clear cut. In fact it seems more like it's silicon that failed to validate for Epyc since it's half the IO die of Epyc (for the non-Pro Threadripper anyway).
Otherwise you're talking about AMD just taking Ryzen-quality chiplets, putting more of them on a substrate, and selling them at a huge markup.
Take the Threadripper 3970X as just a simple example here. It's 4x 8c zen2 chiplets that can hit a peak of 4.5ghz at 280W TDP. Meanwhile the Ryzen 3950x is a 2x 8c zen2 chiplet that hits a peak of 4.7ghz at 105W TDP. So 3970x is 2x the silicon of the 3950x, but lower quality silicon, and AMD charged more than 2x for the 3970X.
That's the brilliance of chiplets and Threadripper. It's Ryzen-class chiplets with half of an Epyc IO die (the IO die being 12nm GloFlo means it's not really competing for high-end prices anyway). It's binning they're already doing for they're primary product lines, not a specialized HEDT-specific process.
So unless AMD just doesn't want a piece of that pie anymore despite only just entering the market, there's absolutely more Threadrippers coming. No doubt about that at all. AMD isn't going to leave the Xeon-W just entirely unchallenged when AMD is otherwise firing on all cylinders.
What they probably won't do is continue to have different sockets for the "Pro" and "non-Pro" threadrippers, though. But that'd be different from them just not having anymore Threadrippers at all. It'll probably just end up in the same category as Ryzen & Ryzen Pro where it's the same socket, just one is sold to consumers and one is sold to OEMs.
Now, a Zen 4 Threadripper is extremely compelling because of DDR5 and PCIe 5.0.
I highly doubt we'll see a vcache version of TR/TR Pro prior to the jump to Zen 4, especially since so far AMD has only officially announced a 3d vcache 5800X which is a single-chiplet product ( https://www.anandtech.com/show/17152/amd-cpus-in-2022-ces )
I do wonder though, what improvements will they bring to the next Threadrippers? There are some rumours about the start of March 2022, I am very curious what can they unveil. Any theories?
And I am not sure Zen 4 Threadrippers would even be available this year but who knows. Plenty of rumours. I better start saving up money because I want to invest in a workstation that will last me at least 10 years (minus SSD wear). And Zen 4 / PCIe v5 / DDR-5 look preeeeeeeetty good.
I agree that a March launch would mean it would be on Zen 3.
I'd guess they planned on TR / TR Pro being a quicker followup after Epyc 7003 launched, but then chip capacity just wasn't there to justify it. And now it probably is, especially as their new stuff is on a different node.
The way I see it, Zen 2 Threadripper is still a good enough product for its goals of a shit load of cores. Zen 3 didn't increase core counts, but Zen 4 does. My suspicion is that AMD probably overproduced Zen 2 TR and is letting its supply run down until it can launch another category redefining product built on Zen 4. Plus, it would look even better in their comparison charts.
But AMD is going to want to establish consistency with OEMs still, so Intel not having anything competitive right now is merely a reduction in pressure on AMD, not something that eliminates it entirely. A Zen 3 Threadripper Pro as a result still seems more likely than not, even if consumer Threadripper doesn't get a Zen 3 treatment. I'm sure AMD would also prefer to simplify the chiplets its fabricating as well. Why keep making Zen 2 chiptlets for TR Pro specifically and nothing else?
edit: So, I'm sure there's some other older thoughts/info presented on his podcasts, but it's the latest thing I heard from him talking about the subject:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8gVyjvSZkg&t=5713s (12 minute section )
I think there is as of yet insuficient data to support that claim. A security processor that guarantees safety for critical data is a good piece of hardware for those that require such functionality, as long as it's optional, not-backrooted, not controlled by a remote corporation, has an open API and interactions with the system can be audited:
Windows devices with Pluton will use the Pluton security processor to protect credentials, user identities, encryption keys, and personal data. None of this information can be removed from Pluton even if an attacker has installed malware or has complete physical possession of the PC.
I don't disagree per se but:
1. I don't give corporations the positive benefit of the doubt. They have done way too many attacks on privacy and I think it'd be naive to think they won't get tempted to have a below-the-kernel backdoor access to everyone's systems. They absolutely would, given the chance. Let's not give them the chance is what I am advocating for.
2. It's not about the advertised good use of the tech. We should first and foremost look for the abuse potential. If it's there then the tech should be dropped. Failing that (because it's too idealistic, I realize that) then we should make double and triple sure our routers and switches are secure and will stop suspicious traffic (if that's even possible for a home user...). Or have systems in place that don't let in every single firmware update.
I am not the first to point out that malware writers are a big beneficiary of such features -- it's a great way to avoid inspection/detection of their code.
"as long as it's optional"
DRM systems ultimately become de facto mandatory, even if they remain optional in theory.
"not controlled by a remote corporation"
Hardware DRM systems ("trusted computing") are inherently controlled by remote corporations; at the end of the day someone has to certify hardware-bound keys, and someone has to revoke leaked keys. Companies routinely try to obscure this crucial detail but if you dig deeply enough in the documentation you will inevitably find it.
And that is not bad technology in itself to have, the question is who gets to sign, and it's a political one. There exist in principle an acceptable threshold that various small OS vendors and Linux/*BSD distributions can pass and virus authors cannot, while allowing for some sort of hardware three finger salute that enables custom self signed roots for organizations and developers that can handle them safely, i.e. a special use case not required by the majority of the population who simply trusts a vendor.
I don't claim the Microsoft tech allows these (most likely not), but I believe these are the correct demands and criticism we should make, approach it as a political issue.
Fighting ideologically against a technology and ignoring the larger political objectives is foolhardy. If the technology delivers value, some vendor will bundle it with pretty pink buttons and corner the market, forcing you to use it too because every body else does and you have no other option. It's how we ended up with solid blocks of DRM from Apple in the hands of billions of consumers that won't even allow you to run your own choice of software, let alone alter the operating system.
I just removed a crypto-miner malware from an IT-illiterate friend's windows computer. There are great many people in this category. If we can't fix their computers by flipping a TPM switch that ensures some level of platform integrity, they will simply go out and buy an Apple device, "because it works better". That's their subjective view, good luck teaching them to value software freedom and learn good security practices.
The technology does not deliver value for users. It has always been intended to benefit Microsoft and their media partners, with a bit of window-dressing meant to trick users into believing that they somehow gain from it. This is possible only because the current market for personal computers has almost no meaningful competition.
"I just removed a crypto-miner malware from an IT-illiterate friend's windows computer"
...and malware authors will use DRM systems like this to make it harder to detect their malware. Instead of, "Hm, CRYPTOMINER.EXE is spinning the CPU" it will be "Something seems to be spinning the CPU but the platform DRM is preventing me from figuring out what is happening."
"some level of platform integrity"
Except that this system does not ensure platform integrity. Sure, firmware and bootloader signing can protect against malware or at least give users the ability to reset their system to a good state, but we are talking about a DRM system and that is a very different story.
Of course, Microsoft's track record on bootloader security is mixed. They have been willing to allow major Linux distros to get a signed "shim" that can be used to bootstrap grub, but they also made a deliberate and arbitrary decision to forbid vendors of ARM systems from allowing users to disable secure boot. The result is that users who want to run their own bootloader, with whatever risk that entails, have less choice in hardware and are forced to spend more. So while UEFI was generally a win for end user security, it came with a strategic effort by Microsoft to exert greater control over user devices -- something which only benefits Microsoft and which was done only as part of their long-term effort to sell DRM to media companies.
The end of all this will be a world where everything looks like the "mobile" ecosystem or video game consoles -- users will not be allowed to run any software that Microsoft did not approve of unless they pay 4-5x more for a computer that has fewer restrictions. Sure, it will make life harder for malware writers -- assuming the approved software does not have tons of exploits -- but it will also mean that Microsoft's interests never get challenged. The only reason anyone will be allowed to run Libreoffice will be competition authorities, and in all likelihood software will be made available based on a user's region (so EU users get to run Libreoffice, but not US users). It will be a net negative for users and for the next generation of developers, who, rather than learning by staying up late with their own computers, will at best only be able to program on their school's computers and only if they are in a wealthy enough school district.
Spoiler alert, if you have any Intel CPU released after 2006-2008, you have one.
In the past few years AMD has started including a BIOS option to disable it. However, I have never seen a convincing explanation of how exactly that option works. The only thing I know is that Linux complains about it at boot on my B450M (from 2019):
Aug 30 23:52:07 kobold kernel: [ 4.811829] ccp 0000:07:00.1: ccp: unable to access the device: you might be running a broken BIOS.
Aug 30 23:52:07 kobold kernel: [ 4.811831] ccp 0000:07:00.1: psp: unable to access the device: you might be running a broken BIOS.
I entertained the idea of me_cleaner many times but yeah, I really can't afford to lose any of my machines and I can't trust almost anyone to do it properly except me -- and I can't do it.
Can you clarify on AMD's PSP? Did you start getting the message after you (supposedly) deactivated it in BIOS? Or is the message only visible when it's active? Or is it always visible?
You might consider picking up a cheap used motherboard from ebay or the like to experiment with, if you're really interested.
> Did you start getting the message after you (supposedly) deactivated it in BIOS?
Yes.
I predict atleast one major world power will mandate this technology in consumer electronics to be able to connect to the internet by 2030 in its current rate of adoption.
They present device-unique keys as impossible with no evidence despite that being exactly how TPMs have worked for decades.
They didn't even mention what is the biggest concern: firmware. This thing is basically a secure microcontroller, and MS has implied that it can run different software to achieve different use cases (at launch it emulates a TPM). The important question is: does it only load firmware signed by Microsoft. If not, I don't have a big issue with it.
How to design secure hardware: The system board contains two copies of the firmware, for which the source code is published. The first copy is fully read-only and cannot be modified after manufacture. The second copy is in flash memory. A switch or jumper on the system board determines which copy is used at boot.
Now you can trust your software/firmware (if you could trust it from the factory), because the read-only copy can be used to boot the system in order flash the read-write copy to a trusted (possibly newer or third party) firmware version.
This also means that a bad firmware update can't brick your hardware, because you can recover it by using the read-only copy.
There is no requirement for the hardware to prove anything to the OS. If the hardware is compromised, this is not actually possible anyway, because it could lie. What you need is for the hardware to be able to prove something to the user, i.e. that the firmware update or operating system they just installed was actually installed and not ignored or modified by some already-compromised read-write firmware.
Also whenever you hear "security" you need to think "who's security?". Like when you go to the airport they're all on about "security" but it's not your security - you yourself are being made less secure by having to disassemble your person at the checkpoint for their security.
Similarly a "security processor", as defined by Big Tech [0], has the goal of making them more secure at the expense of your own security. They can't have you running whatever pesky user-empowering software you want and all that. You might end up believing some of those radical ideas from the 90's!
[0] which includes Big Hardware, which we're unfortunately reliant upon due to economies of scale.
Not necessarily. Suppose you use ordinary flash but the write lines are physically not connected to it so there is no way to write to it from software.
In theory someone could desolder it and replace the contents, but if the attacker is desoldering your hardware, you've already lost.
> Also whenever you hear "security" you need to think "who's security?".
They try to sell people the "security processor" as a feature. It's important to make everyone aware of what it really is.
A second flash chip with a write disable line would also work, but that's not what you described. For one difference, it allows for evil maid attacks with an external flasher.
> But they try to sell people the "security processor" as a feature. It's important to make everyone aware of what it really is.
I agree, but it's not productive to just unilaterally define "security processor" the other way and talk past the problem. Either qualify it ("user representing security processor"), or otherwise make it clear that "security" doesn't always imply something good for the user (in fact in consumer marketing material it's more often harmful than good).
1. Load stage zero from maskrom
2. Stage zero loads stage one from flash along with a public signing key from maskrom
3. Stage zero verifies the signature of stage one from vendor. If it’s not valid, halt.
4. Stage zero jumps into stage one.
5. Stage one and later perform the rest of the attestation and booting process.
The hardest part is bootstrapping, but it’s really not THAT hard…
The only two solutions I've seen for preserving user freedom while preventing evil maid attacks are either making it so that all system state can be easily read out and verified by external tools, or allowing for a mutable signing key that can only be changed by waiting an appropriate time delay (say on the order of days).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next-Generation_Secure_Computi...
https://secret.club/2021/06/28/windows11-tpms.html
https://www.eff.org/wp/trusted-computing-promise-and-risk
https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:206552/FULLTEXT0...
> Imagine you want to watch your favorite show on Netflix in 4k, but your hardware trust factor is low? Too bad you’ll have to settle for the 720p stream. Untrusted devices could be watching in an instance of Linux KVM, and we can’t risk your pirating tools running in the background!
Oh no, video platforms don't want me pirating their stuff. Video game companies don't want me to cheat with aimbots and wallhacks. And all it needs is "has this user tampered with the OS to the point that I can't figure out if they've tampered with my process". This is 1984 at long last.
I certainly wouldn't want to live in a world where this is a possibility.
So, it's important that it's optional, so everybody will do their best to make it mandatory.
> why should Netflix give you a full 4k stream when you've chosen to disable the widevine extension in your browser? They can't tell their media provider "we try our best to prevent piracy" if they do that. The same goes for things like Valorant and the inevitable age where online games require TPM attestation - if someone runs their computer in an untrusted state that makes it nigh impossible for the anti-cheat to figure out they're running aimbot/wallhacks (or other cheats that do best by reading the process's memory), why should they let that computer play, when it could ruin the experience for other players?
Ah yes, of course; just like, in the name of preventing anything that they possibly could, it's totally reasonable for them to demand that you leave your webcam on and stream a screen share and the webcam to their servers at all times, since that will make it extremely difficult to cheat. Privacy and security concerns are irrelevant, since after all they have to do their very best possible job, right?
This is already how tests for school (including higher education) have been done, especially since the pandemic started[0]. In most situations, like playing a game, you can choose to play a different game (perhaps one not tied to being internet connected), but with higher education it's effectively forced on you to get a degree.
0: https://web.respondus.com/using-lockdown-browser-with-a-webc...
I don't want Netflix to have the ability to verify the software I'm running before it gives me the stream I paid for. None of the things they could do with that power, such as forcing me to watch ads before the stream I've already paid for, or charging me different prices based on the kind of device I'm using benefit me.
We as technologists should be wary of technologies that further shift the balance of power away from users.
Exactly, This is why I said below that this is a political issue. The question is whether the politics will see big tech as a threat and restrict them or as a potential ally and merge with their power.
It is optional the way the Internet is optional; in theory you can live without it but no longer practical. If companies keep pushing these systems, eventually they will become a requirement all over the place. Microsoft's track record with UEFI bootloader restrictions makes it pretty clear what that future looks like: cheap devices used by the masses will be more heavily restricted, while those who can shell out 3-4x the money can get a computer that at least allows them to run whatever software they want to run.
"why should Netflix give you a full 4k stream when you've chosen to disable the widevine extension in your browser?"
Why should Netflix dictate what hardware and operating system I get to run? A basic design principle of the Web, which Netflix relies on to avoid having to provision set-top boxes for their customers, is that anyone can implement a client without first seeking permission. In an ideal world Netflix would have to respect the basic design principles of the Web and of the Internet in order to benefit from those systems, but we obviously do not live in an ideal world.
The largest companies in tech and media are trying to rewrite the rules of the consumer markets they do business in for their own benefit. For the entertainment companies DRM is a convenient way to avoid copyright laws (i.e. the part where copyrights expire and where fair use is a defense against infringement claims), and for tech companies DRM is a strategic play that allows them to control the devices they sell to users and monetize that control by selling DRM features to media companies. The legal and financial structures in place today encourage this behavior, and the concentration of power and lack of effective competition are making it possible.
... beause we are a paying customer, want stuff in standard formats instead of proprietary ephemeral garbage, and we can just torrent it in 3 minutes? ...
OT: sounds like Emule.
No one is arguing against all form of verification of trust, hell even fully open public domain content would benefit from simple verification, what people are (rightfully) angry over is the fact that: A: It's not open for anyone to audit/modify B: It's a forced dictation upon the customer, not the bad guy.
In essence in the name of "trust" don't trust the customer, even though customers would gladly see individual implementations such as anti-cheat be implemented.
But i will never consent to having the gaming session recorded by a camera or using Microsoft Pluton for that matter.
That is simply a step too far for comfort, and not being able to purchase a CPU without Pluton tells me that this will be forced upon the consumer.
- This (whatever it is) will lead to vendor lock in and more incompatibilities as usual
- It will cause privacy problems, despite little hip kids pretending that caring about privacy is not cool, then again video cards are already full of privacy problems, and just connecting to an online game uniquely identifies you. These are not the end of the world but they are a misfeature.
- It will cause security problems. Every time someone implements some trash like this that mentions it "has security" in an abstract content-free marketing description, it causes vulns. Cloudflare leaking bank passwords to other websites and the RCE in Intel ME come to mind
- This is the 1000th time an OS/hardware vendor has proposed a "security" gimmick that we are all forced to put up with because of mindless consumers. The previous 999 things have failed to even remotely achieve their goal.
- Whatever it is does not conceptually solve game cheating; the multiplayer design meta is broken and in flux for the last 30 years. Right now anyone can make their own client for a game. Is this allowed? Oh no it renders shadows with a different set of pixels, what will we do? Oh wait, so do video cards probably (not into 3D so no idea).
Video piracy is literally impossible to prevent, why even bring that up.
ugh
That's a ton of assumptions, all probably wrong, but do we always have to immediately jump to the negative assumptions? Especially when it's meant to interface with the cerberus OCP project.
To quote Microsoft:
> However, AS3 must also authenticate the device itself. It does that via a protocol called remote attestation:
> [...] 2. The device signs these values with Pluton’s private ECC attestation key and sends them back to AS3.
> 3. AS3 already has the device’s public ECC attestation key and can therefore determine whether the device is authentic, was booted with genuine software, and if the genuine software is trusted. [...]
It is OBVIOUS exactly what this is. This is technology that will progress as follows:
1. Your streaming platform will only work if you are using a Microsoft Pluton hardware-backdoor agent. The blog post literally talks about verifying "genuine" and "trusted" software. That's as close as you can say 'DRM' without explicitly saying 'DRM'.
2. Your banking apps, and eventually websites, will not work unless your device features a Microsoft Pluton hardware-backdoor agent; just like Google's "SafetyNet".
3. Your government is going to introduce QR code check-ins (like those here in Sydney, Australia; which technically carry a prison sentence if you don't comply), and the government QR scanner app will only work on devices with SafetyNet, Microsoft Pluton, etc.
4. Eventually, it will technically be impossible to connect to the internet, or your ISP, unless you are running ring -1 backdoored hardware. Your ISP will 'remotely attest' that your hardware and software is 'trusted'.
5. Think Apple's client-side CSAM scanning is bad? Just wait for governments to require all OS vendors scan local content (photos, soon text) are scanned against a government-controlled secret database of 'illegal' material. To protect the kids, and stop terrorism, or course.
6. Much like DMCA's anti-circumvention clause, attempting to disable Microsoft Pluton, or comparable agents, will become a felony, because you are circumventing a 'control measure'.
[1]: https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2022/01/04/ces-2...
[2] : https://azure.microsoft.com/en-au/blog/anatomy-of-a-secured-...
P.S: 'The Pluton security processor’s firmware will be updateable through Windows Update along with standard industry control'.
Step 1: Microsoft Pluton
Step 2: ...
Step 3: Eating Babies
You've taken a perfectly legitimate requirement in modern computing environments: The need to secure against attacks end to end, from the software you're running, through the entire ecosystem, even to the supply chain, and extending it to something nefarious.
Sure, it could be used to create a world where no one can run unapproved code. Or it could be used to create a world where you can OPT IN to running approved or unapproved code. e.g. iOS vs Android side-loading.
Consumers will likely retain the choice, on Windows, to override the system and run unsafe code. However enterprise / managed computer systems likely will prevent it. I mean what security team or sysadmin wants office workers to be able to install and run arbitrary code on corporate machines or networks?
Let's try to avoid catastrophizing everything.
If the way to achieve end to end security is by giving full control to someone else then I don't think that's worth it.
It is a catastrophe if people end up losing control of their systems like they have with phones and consoles.
Most people don't want that. Most people don't have time for that. For them, an Xbox that can browse web , run Office, and play streamers, remotely administered by a company with name recognition and trust like Microsoft, is enough. And that even goes for many Hackernews; if I had a nickel for everytime I've heard something like "Oh, desktop Linux? No thank you, that's for college students with plenty of time on their hands. I'm a professional dev, but I have kids and a mortgage so I need something that Just Works." I could buy a fancy meal for me and my girlfriend with the proceeds.
A big part of Just Works in today's pervasively interconnected world involves delegating the security of your device to a third party, either your company's IT or Apple, Microsoft, or Google for personal devices.
So while you can still run unsigned software on x86 on Windows today, if Microsoft previous attempts at ARM machines had succeeded, it would have been indeed impossible to run unsigned software on some Windows installations.
For example, if I run an app, which also requires me to run some code in a container in a data center, I as the client, want to remotely attest that the code in the data center is not running in a tampered fashion.
Or perhaps I have my watch, AR glasses, and phone are collaborating, and these three devices come from different manufacturers, and are running different software, and I want to ensure that none of them has been tampered with.
And let's not forget IoT devices, which are the killer application I've seen suggested for remote attestation.
"with neutral protocols mediating between them". Protocols aren't implementations. There are cases when I am interacting with someone else and I want them to prove their identity to me, including the identity of their software. Maybe I'm running a supposedly secure chat client in an authoritarian state, and I want to know that the chat client they're running isn't a trojan they got from a government security service.
You don't need remote attestation to get to the bad places you suggestion. App Stores have been like that for years without attestation. Consoles have been closed down for decades. Relatively simple, unsophisticated copy protection can prevent most people from running what they want, no fancy crypto protocols needed.
Yes I am, because that is the alarming case. A main use of the "end to end" integrity you talk about will be from powerful centralized companies right to people's eyeballs and fingertips, thus computationally disenfranchising individuals.
It's cute to be able to get better security properties out of a cloud host [0], but not really germane to the larger societal effects. And to be honest these things sound like a solution looking for problems. Clouds are for non-personal data only. Devices from different manufacturers should still be representing me and therefore not mutually suspicious. The Internet of Trash is a problem due to lack of updates and open protocols, not a lack of centralized control over those devices.
> You don't need remote attestation to get to the bad places you suggest
The ill effects you're describing are created by the original "innovation" of treacherous computing, the locked down platform. To solidify that regime of control, you need to keep non-locked-out devices out. That is where remote attestation comes in.
Right now if a powerful party that I need to interact with demands to know what software my device is running, I can lie, and make sure my custom client follows what they're expecting so they don't know the difference. They can up the game and lock their client down more and more, but ultimately once someone gets it to spill its secrets, it's fair game for open access. Remote attestation is then a security vulnerability such that I cannot use a third party client and lie about it.
In general authoritarianism always looks appealing and will always be framed in terms of the benefits it brings. But it's an anathema to open society that will inevitably be abused by bad actors.
[0] furthermore you can never discount that as power coalesces, large businesses won't get exceptions to break various security properties for various necessary-sounding reasons. So independent actors won't even be able to rely on the claimed security properties.
This makes all the red flags go off, and yes sure we can tell ourselves that it will be ok.
Without any mention on the consequences of disabling this, i think it's quite reasonable to assume the worst.
This is functionality that in no way is a net benefit for the consumer, period.
However Intel dabbled with technology much more sinister (SGX) that did exactly what it said exactly on the tin, protecting data from the user of the machine. Unlike MS's track record with Pluton, it was always horribly broken,required a license to attest victim machines and only covered the Intel half of the PC market. The only commercial software I'm aware of that ever mandated SGX is some blu ray player for windows
The world can't run on nerd vanity hardware like RaptorComputing POWER workstations and Honeycomb LX2's
It... Totally can? The only problem with Raptor is that they don't make any cheap hardware. In terms of performance and functionally, they're good.
Let me suggest you look into something called "Windows Update" which seems to be an intentional backdoor/RCE that Microsoft has baked into their operating system.
Yes, that's what Operating Systems tend to do.
Why are you running an OS from a company you don't trust?
If this processor can be disabled in the BIOS, like existing TPMs typically can be, then does this matter? If Microsoft's "hardware backdoor" is only powered on when using Microsoft's OS anyway then what's the problem?
If this can't be easily turned off, then yes that's absolutely a problem. But there's no evidence that's the case, and would be a divergence from existing TPMs in that regard.
I'm disappointed in the HN crowd going into hysterics when the reality is simple; no hardware module can spy on an OS that knows exactly how the module works and can actively deny it any access.
This can be initiated through the actual "owners" of this chip or the next malware authors that exploit this undocumented black box that received zero scrutiny by the public security community.
The typical backdoor concern for things like Intel's management engine is via ethernet, which it definitely does have access to and is a lot easier for it to stand up & make a connection. But wifi requires credentials or some way for this security chip to inject additional packets. The former isn't really plausible without OS participation, and the latter would be very detectible if it happened.
The owners of the chip can't exactly magic commands directly to the chip, after all. And communication with the outside world is trivially detected unless they go through the extreme cost of giving it its own cell modem or similar.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Management_Engine
The WiFi could connect to a neighboring device supporting this function. Amazon developed Sidewalk[0] for example. Or my country has an ISP that lets you connect from any of the subscriber's wifi, as long as you pass your credentials. The subscribers can turn this off, but it's opt-out.
So this is two, actual, already deployed mechanism that solves the "how it's sending to the mothership" problem. And I expect more to come - looking at 5G for example.
[0] https://www.theregister.com/2020/11/24/amazon_sidewalk_opt_o...
I don't think so. If you skim through the Intel ME wiki article, which is one of such systems, it works almost completely independently from the computer, having separate and privileged access to different hardware, like the ethernet card, and doing whatever it pleases - including working while the computer itself is turned off.
The problem we're reacting against is that when these chips exist widely enough, it becomes plausible for others to assert that everyone's computing device has one. At that point it's possible for third parties you want to interact with (eg your bank, government, entertainment provider, or even mundane web service) to start insisting that you use such chip's functionality to prove exactly what software you are running, for their "security" [1]. At which point it becomes impossible to run anything besides approved locked-down proprietary environments when interacting with such services.
As others have said, look at "SafetyNet" on Android. It's new enough that you can still pick banks that don't insist on dictating your computing environment, but with our moribund markets and monkey-see-monkey-do executives, the trend can only go in one direction.
[0] assuming no side channel between it and the network card(s).
[1] which they'll Orwellianly brand as "your security"
It all goes back to the concept of the chain of trust. If a company can vouch for the code all the way from them to where it is running, that is an incredible improvement to security. Apple does it for its encryption and startup sequence, having delegated macOS to a read-only, signed volume on your disk that they can cryptographically guarantee has not been modified one bit. That, to me, is a great improvement in the security of our lives, and our banking.
Since central planning is unscalable, this inherently leads to mandates that are ignorant, arbitrary, and capricious. For example, perhaps a bank makes it against their terms to access your account through a virtual machine, due to a lack of understanding technology and a general worry - it's one more moving part and this user is doing something nonstandard that they don't understand, so to them risk goes way up. Yet I myself do all my banking access in a VM, for various security and practical reasons. But still I don't have to worry about any bank actually attempting to enforce such a clause, since unless they really start digging through my system stats with javascript and/or raw sockets, they won't even have any indicator of such. Whereas remote attestation would allow them to cut right through all of that and enforce such a thing (actually it would prevent it by default), thereby (increasingly) preventing me from operating my personal computing environment how I see fit.
Banning banking through a non-signed OS, sure.
And unlike abstractly debating this stuff in the early 2000's, we have already seen what has occurred with platform signing keys! Increasingly locked down proprietary OS's, arbitrary top-down restrictions on what software can be run, and everpresent centralized control. All in the name of "security" which really means corporate predictability (aka "authoritarianism"). So really your comment is like another asteroid has already hit and obliterated the moon, as was predicted by the same projections, and yet you're still treating the straightforward implication as a hypothetical.
And was your response to my example supposed to be a counterargument? I don't see how general VMs would ever be allowed [0]. But sure assuming they are, go through and replace "VM" with "non signed OS" if you'd like. So I'm supposed to buy and setup MS Windows [1] to access an online bank - simply to appease some out of touch risk assessor?
[0] it would mean verifying arbitrary dom0 OS's (eg NixOS) and arbitrary hypervisors (eg libvirt+kvm)
[1] for which my current security policy is to disallow it from connecting to the Internet after it has touched any personal information
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25191319 “Microsoft Pluton Hardware Security Coming to Our CPUs”: AMD, Intel, Qualcomm (156 comments)
[1] Being alive and security aware for the last few decades.
A similar story unfolding in the early 00's was thwarted by the tech community shaming microsoft into dropping the plans (name Palladium back then). I have a feeling people were much more vigilant and better informed back then.
I guess mainstream Linux distro's will be okay but probably not homebrew stuff you see pop up on HN every now and again.
Apple does the same for the T2 so why the pitchforks ???.
Once this tech reaches critical mass of adoption, you might have trouble participating in the modern world since your device is not "trusted". Much like how Android's safetynet prevents running banking apps if boot time signatures do not mach an approved list.
[1] https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/bullseye-bonus-1-8ghz-raspb...
RISC-V is the future for no backdoor.
Is it just me or did “mobile” get redefined while I wasn’t looking? To me, a mobile device is a phone. This seems to imply that a mobile device is anything that isn’t a desktop. Above quote from another site btw.