Microsoft Spy Hardware

[Dr.H]

Jonas Arnaldo, Submitted the following Information:
Subject: osforge.com Contact Form Editorial
Email: [email protected]
URL: http://www.nyfairuse.org/
ICQ:
Company: New Yorkers for Fair Use
Location:
Comments:
Stop Palladium and TCPA now!

Tell American Megatrends and Transmeta not to make chips that let others control your computer!

Please use the following form to tell American Megatrends and Transmeta not to produce their AMIBIOS8 and TM5800 chips, and
that you will boycott any technology that enables TCPA and Palladium technology on your computer:
http://www.nyfairuse.org/action/palladium/

What's Going On:

Last week, Intel, Microsoft, the RIAA and the MPAA announced their intention to force Palladium and TCPA into every personal
computer on the planet. Palladium and TCPA are a different kind of DRM, worse than even the most invasive of previously
proposed "content control" systems.

Palladium and TCPA would hardwire your home computer so that these four entities and their partners would be able to run
processes on your computer, entirely outside your control, indeed, without your knowledge.

Below we answer some questions about DRM, Palladium, TCPA, and the boycott.

New Yorkers for Fair Use

What is DRM?

DRM is the political, legal, contractual, economic, hardware, and software infrastructure designed and intended by a loose
alliance of cartels and monopolies to take away your right to own and privately use a computer. No full DRM exists in the
world today, though pieces of DRM have been successfully enacted into law and tiny bits of DRM hardware and software have been
placed in some home movie playing and recording devices. Every single piece of DRM is meant to help attain the objective of
the anti-ownership alliance: to get control of every personal computer in the world.

Intel and Microsoft and RIAA and MPAA, by their own admission, have, to date, spent billions of dollars to force universal
DRM on the entire world. Last week these four reiterated their intention to force DRM into every personal computer on the
planet:

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/15/business/15PIRA.html
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-980671.html

For more on DRM see:

http://newsforge.com/newsforge/02/1...50.shtml?tid=19
http://www.panix.com/~jays/what.is.drm.3

What is Palladium?

"Palladium" is Microsoft's name for its proposed DRM system. No implementation of Palladium exists today, indeed no complete
specification of Palladium exists today, but certain hardware which a Palladiated operating system requires is about to be
placed in all personal computers, unless we stop Microsoft and its hardware and vendor partners, such as Intel, American
Megatrends, Transmeta, Dell, and CompUSA.

What will Palladium do?

Palladium will enable a few large corporations and governments to run source secret, indeed, well-encrypted, code on home
users' machines in such a way that the home user cannot see, modify, or control the running code. A Palladiated system is
under the complete control of Microsoft at all times. Microsoft might allow some of its partners to run code on your machine,
but no code will run on a Palladiated system without Microsoft's consent. The mechanics are as follows: only code that has
been signed with a special Microsoft provided key will run. Microsoft will retain at all times the power to revoke any other
entity's keys. In particular, no operating system will be able to boot without a key from Microsoft. So if Palladium is forced
into every home computer, there will be no more free software.

Microsoft will be able to spy on each and every keystroke, and mouse movement, and send encrypted messages from your machine
to Microsoft headquarters. Microsoft will also be able to examine every file on your system. Your encryption programs will not
work against Microsoft, or any other entities which have full power keys from Microsoft.

But surely wily crackers and freedom-loving hackers around the world will be able to defeat Palladium by breaking it?

No. Whether or not a few hackers are able to get around some versions of Palladium, most people will not be able to. There
are two reasons most people will not be able to escape the All Seeing Eye and Invisible Hand of Palladium. First, Palladium is
not like the absurdly weak systems called "DRM" today. Palladium is both hardware and software, and the software is locked to
the hardware in a manner completely different from today's weak DRM systems. The design of Palladium allows for defense in
depth, and even one layer of Palladium is harder to crack than any DRM ever seen before. Second, under the Digital Millennium
Copyright Act of the United States of America, it is illegal to try to see what Palladium is doing. It is also illegal to
modify the hardware of a Palladiated system. And it is a felony to sell advice on how to disable Palladium or its supporting
hardware. It is hard enough today to get vendors to sell computers with a free operating system already installed. On!
ce Microsoft and Intel have forced Palladiated hardware into every personal computer, it will be impossible to run a free OS.
The very act of booting a free OS will be outlawed by application of the DMCA to a Palladiated computer.

But there are no Palladium systems available today. So how can you boycott Palladium?

We are boycotting the hardware that Palladium needs. Before Palladium is rolled out, Palladium-enabling hardware must be
placed in most of the world's personal computers. Right now such hardware is being placed in computers meant for home and
business use without the buyer being told. Our boycott is aimed at stopping Palladium-enabling hardware from being secretly
forced into every personal computer in world. We intend to stop Palladium before we cease to own the computers in our own
houses and offices.

The main Palladium-enabling hardware is called a "TPM" for Trusted Platform Module. The TPM hardware will support, in
addition to Palladium, many different systems which take control of the computer away from the user and give control to large
corporations and government entities. The TCPA, the Trusted Computing Platform Alliance, is the standards organization for the
TPM. The founding Alliance members are Compaq, HP, IBM, Intel and Microsoft. Since 1999, the year TCPA was founded, about one
hundred more companies have joined the TCPA. The Alliance has published a formal specification of the TPM. The TCPA's FAQ

http://www.trustedcomputing.org/doc...FAQ_0703021.pdf

seeks to allay the natural suspicions of computer buyers about what the TPM does. Unfortunately the FAQ is inaccurate on the
most important issues. For example, the claim is made that a computer with a working TPM will remain under the final,
ultimate, and complete control of the user. But, as explained above, this is simply untrue.

So what exactly are you doing?

We refuse to buy any computer with a TPM inside and we ask you to refuse to buy any computer with a TPM inside. We use the
term "TPM" to include TPM-like devices, whether in a separate chip, in the BIOS chip, or even in the cpu. This means that we
ask buyers of personal computers to find out whether the computer has a TPM or a TPM-like device inside. We will shortly
provide buyers of home computers with methods for telling whether or not a computer has a TPM inside.

Is it possible to be more specific today?

Yes. We call for a boycott of the just announced American Megatrends AMIBIOS8:

http://www.ami.com/ami/showpress.cfm?PrID=118

http://www.ami.com/products/product...atID=6&SubID=14

http://interviews.slashdot.org/arti...9/166251&tid=99

http://interviews.slashdot.org/arti...=thread&tid=137

and the just announced Transmeta TM5800 cpu:

http://siliconvalley.internet.com/n...cle.php/1569201

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=...=thread&tid=161

Where can I find out more about Palladium, TCPA, and DMCA?

For Palladium see:

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/tcpa-faq.html

http://wintermute.homelinux.org/mis... Security.txt

http://discuss.microsoft.com/SCRIPT...T=0&O=A&P=12347
http://www.theregus.com/content/4/25378.html
http://www.counterpane.com/crypto-gram-0208.html#1

http://www.ofb.biz/modules.php?name...article&sid=152

For TCPA and the TPM see:

http://www.trustedcomputing.org

For the DMCA see:

http://www.nyfairuse.org/analysis/d....repealed.xhtml
http://anti-dmca.org
http://www.nyfairuse.org/dmca.xhtml

form now on i will take good care of my old comp

 

[nealric]

I would like to know how much of that is true, and how much of it is alarmist bs.

Im sure theres a grain of truth to that, but how do they know all the evil things that palladium will do if the standard is not even finalized yet?

 

[Sterculus]

I don't think that they could really force you to run Palladium...that would leave absolutly no doubt of Microsofts monopoly. The act of me buying a processor, or CPU, or whatever has the magic Microsoft control chips should not commit me to buy Microsoft products.
That is basically saying that if you own a computer, you also have to own Microsoft software, which must go against some laws.
And what about setting up some sort of Linux-based computer without the Palladium hardware to filter all the incoming/outgoing web traffic and block any Palladium transfers? Couldn't that theoretically stop this?

 

[pip]

If crap like this happens someone will figure out how to carve the chip off the PCB and solder wires in a certain configuration so as to remove the filter, probly as simple as that

 

[Caffinehog]

What I'm worried about is a hacker figuring out how to make the computers think he's microsoft, then sending out a code that crashes every palladium-equipped PC, or hijacks it for his own purpose.

 

[LkyOldSun]

Micro$oft doing $omething like that?
There$ no way.

 

[nealric]

I think palladium might be a good idea for goverment and high sensitivity coporate environments, but for home desktops- its just stupid.

Do a survey of the joe computer users you know and ask if theyve ever been hacked in a noticeable way. Chances are you wont find any. Sure, they might have been hacked and ignorant of it- but such a hack would be someome snooping around for credit card info, etc. Few people keep sensitive info like this on their home computers anyways.

I think palladium will never really catch on outside coporate and governemnt environments. I doubt people will be sold. Sure, microsoft has pressure from the media outlets to implement DRM, but it will bail to save its own skin if people dont like it.

However, if palladium does become standard on home computers, it might create an interesting market for overclocked machines, the fastest pre palladium ocded to the max would probably be very attractive (at least for a while)

 

[Caffinehog]

Do a survey of the joe computer users you know and ask if theyve ever been hacked in a noticeable way. Chances are you wont find any. Sure, they might have been hacked and ignorant of it- but such a hack would be someome snooping around for credit card info, etc. Few people keep sensitive info like this on their home computers anyways.

My point is that microsoft can run script on your computer. Do you think they'll JUST run it on your computer? No, it will be more like an internet broadcast. Hackers would have a field day.

 

[Sterculus]

I think if the general population was informed of the full implications of something like this (what Microsoft could do, and what potential hackers could do) there would be a lot of people who would oppose it, enough to make M$ rethink.
The RIAA would have a field day if something like this ever happened. Then we wouldn't be able to keep mp3s of our own freaken CDs on our computers, cause how are they going to tell the difference between that and something that you downloaded?