Linux and Open Source may be one of the last remaining barriers to this becoming widespread. It's one of the main reasons I whole-heartedly support Valve and their Steam Deck ambitions, and encourage everyone to do the same. Money trumps everything else, so as long as the money to be made from supporting SteamOS > money thought to be saved from piracy, I believe we can still thwart this.
On Intel clients, this is done via the Management Engine, bypassing both the CPU and operating system, as the ME can control display output.
If you knew the codec used originally you could even try to (near) perfectly reconstruct the original bitstream. Especially if you know various codec parameters and some side-channel data (such as which video data is contained in which encrypted blocks) it may be possible to relatively efficiently search for the bitstream that decompresses to the data that you are seeing.
> these tiny parts usually run with high privileges and dramatically impact the overall system. In such cases, MTE/CHERI play pretty nicely - they help ensure that whatever bugs we have in these areas are killed at their root cause (probabilistically/deterministically). This is exactly why MSR, MSRC and Azure Silicon pushed for this AMAZING project of CheriIoT ... scaling CHERI down to RISC-V32E, the smallest core RISC-V specification. I’m very excited about this project, and I hope once we will open-source the ISA and the prototype, more folks across the industry could join.
That is a direction that would benefit everyone: open silicon and open firmware for the most security sensitive components. It is technically possible and at least some humans in big companies understand why it is necessary for our future would-be-digital civilizations.
https://kakaroto.ca/2019/11/exploiting-intels-management-eng...
It's good to raise awareness of the centralization risks of remote attestation. One pro-security, pro-freedom alternative is local attestation, e.g. to a USB security key running OSS firmware under user control. Widespread use of user-controlled attestations would make it harder for cloud services to impose unilateral requirements, requiring negotiation among competing objectives.
One remote attestation scenario could be disaggregation of critical apps into dedicated on-device VMs which look like cloud lambdas/functions/unikernels. Remote attestation could be done for a special-purpose VM (e.g. banking), leaving other general purpose OS VMs unrestricted. This is possible today with Windows Hyper-V on secured-core x86/Arm hardware, Android 13 with the pKVM hypervisor on Pixel 6/7 hardware, and the HP/Bromium AX hypervisor.
MS/Pluton thread, https://twitter.com/dwizzzlemsft/status/1511440279462563842
> what are they going to say when it's supported in Linux and we open source it ... the Pluton team also uses Linux daily, builds TWO Microsoft Linux distros, and upstreams Linux kernel features.
On servers, a forward-looking approach is being taken with OCP Caliptra, an open root of trust that will precede booting of the main SoC (including Pluton) and mandates open firmware that must be dual-signed by both the OEM and the datacenter owner. It is an early attempt to forestall ME/PSP/BMC Groundhog Day. If it succeeds on OCP servers (where datacenter owners have power to negotiate with OEM/ODMs), perhaps more transparency and owner control/veto can be brought to client devices, https://twitter.com/platformsec/status/1533398356088737793.
What's the point? That's about as useful as running your own CA. The fact is, those pushing remote attestation want remote centralised control and they're going to care that you have your own attestation infrastructure as much as they'll care that you have your own CA, i.e. they're not going to be satisfied because they're trusting their own, and not yours.
the Pluton team also uses Linux daily, builds TWO Microsoft Linux distros, and upstreams Linux kernel features.
That's even scarier. If the only form of "supported" Linux becomes Microsoft Linux (with its own unique brand of spyware and other crap forced on you due to RA), don't say we never saw it coming: Embrace, Extend, Extinguish... or perhaps that last E should now be Enslave.
If it succeeds on OCP servers (where datacenter owners have power to negotiate with OEM/ODMs), perhaps more transparency and owner control/veto can be brought to client devices,
We already had "owner control" until they started trying to take that away from us. We don't need nor want attestation at all. No means NO!
This cuts in both directions. Unlike certificates, attestation is not a zero-sum fight over a single monolithic measurement attribute that can only be A or B, it can support a goal of having A and B, e.g. as disaggregated VMs. If a cloud wants subset B, then the user/owner/enterprise local attestation can insist that the client must have subset A, otherwise it can reject subset-B-without-A.
Running your own CA IS useful.
Leaving aside the debatable nature of how open and free a RPi is, what's the point of "general-purpose computing" when it can't actually be used? When/if you need a locked-down machine controlled by some central authority to do what you can still do today with a free and open one, i.e. create and consume media, interact with services, communicate with others, etc., how much value does a truly libre computer have? It's almost like the "just build your own platform" argument when it comes to censorship.
Arm, including the quirky RPi, is not comparable in openness to x86 general purpose desktops, which were a happy confluence of accidents, determined individuals and scrappy businesses. That is still worth defending, if only to slow the slide backwards.
M1 Macs have a unique take on hardware security that can co-exist with general-purpose computing for open-source Linux, and Apple's vertical integration. https://archive.fosdem.org/2022/schedule/speaker/xeno_kovah/. Hopefully Asahi Linux will succeed in creating a relatively maintainable port for multiple generations of Apple Silicon.
Not even the HN-audience cares enough to turn down something shiny.
This situation reminds me of the fuss around Palladium, a solution which seemed to be abandoned by Microsoft on its merits:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next-Generation_Secure_Computi...
> Edit: nice, downvotes. Hello corpo-authoritarians, we know what's up :-)
This also reminds me of the fuss around Palladium:
More awareness needs to be made of how this will have a devestating impact on end-user freedom. They're attacking the PC, one of the last holdouts of general-purpose computing freedom. Remote attestation will make it so you "can" technically run your own hardware and software (and that's what the FUD-spreaders will always say), but you'll be denied access to lots of, increasingly online, services.
Edit: nice, downvotes. Hello corpo-authoritarians, we know what's up :-)