How four Microsoft engineers proved that the “darknet” would defeat DRM

Re:How four Microsoft engineers proved that the “darknet” wo... by marshray on Friday November 30, 2012 @02:23PM (#4854963)

I just noticed that Microsoft has an opening for a "Privacy Strategist, Senior - Trustworthy Computing"

https://careers.microsoft.com/jobdetails.aspx?ss=&pg=0&#... https://twitter.com/adamshostack/status/274589817776525312

I accepted a position at Microsoft a few months ago, and I'm feeling pretty happy about it. I've been a merciless critic of MS in the past, but it appears to me now that MS is one of the few large tech companies in a position to make the consumer's privacy interests a competitive advantage in their products.

One of my long-standing criticisms of the whole Trustworthy computing initiative matched what was described in the article: that all this research in computer security and TPM hardware on the motherboard was not being used well in the interest of the consumer. With the very notable exception of Bitlocker, "trustworthy" tended to mean that 3rd party interests could expect the computer to act on their behalf and against the demands of the system's actual owner.

If you are or know someone who can articulate good arguments on behalf of the user and privacy, please show them this job posting.

Thanks :-)

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Re:How four Microsoft engineers proved that the “darknet” wo... by atesti on Friday November 30, 2012 @07:14PM (#4856213)

It's really sad what happened to the TPM!

After all the initial uproar the TPM was designed to not be able to enforce anything. It just sits there passively measuring e.g. your boot loader and BIOS and it only unlocks the secret key to your fully encrypted harddrive if the boot loader is untampered.

Great technology!

But everyone hates the TPM and it is not in every motherboard nowadays, although it would be great for Bitlocker!

But what we got anyway was the Trusted Media path in the Windows kernel, so that only trusted audio drivers could play DRM content.

But now with Windows 8 everything is bad and nobody gives a sh*t, after being brainwashed to accept the Apple appstore:

We now have the worst enforcement technology: Secure UEFI and locked down hardware which can't even run Linux out of the box!

And nobody is protesting against it!

It has nothing good (like the TPM did: TPM could store certificates and other secrets and sign data etc.) and only bad things: It enforces what you run.

And I bet Microsoft wants this to enforce that no sideloading can happen.

So in the future when the Windows desktop is gone a mandatory Windows Defender will delete all your illegal unwanted software and you can only buy through the Windows store and never ever load kernel drives which patch away stupid restrictions in your software.

No more games to be conserved in MOMA I guess...

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Re:How four Microsoft engineers proved that the “darknet” wo... by yuhong on Friday November 30, 2012 @03:14PM (#4855203)

"Trustworthy" and "Trusted" Computing are different.

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Re:How four Microsoft engineers proved that the “darknet” wo... by wmf on Friday November 30, 2012 @03:59PM (#4855410)

Specifically, in MS-speak "trustworthy computing" means having fewer security holes and "trusted computing" is basically DRM.

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Re:How four Microsoft engineers proved that the “darknet” wo... by marshray on Friday November 30, 2012 @04:10PM (#4855459)

Yes, it's probably not directly related to TPM DRM per se. But this position reads like it would involve privacy advocacy and strategy in general.

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