FW: LCS/CIS Talk, OCT 18, TOMORROW

[david at thekramers.net (David Kramer)]

>   a. Curtained memory. The ability to wall off and hide pages of main
> memory so that each "Palladium" application can be assured that it is
> not modified or observed by any other application or even the
> operating system.

>   b. Attestation. The ability for a piece of code to digitally sign
> or otherwise attest to a piece of data and further assure the
> signature recipient that the data was constructed by an unforgeable,
> cryptographically identified software stack.

>   c. Sealed storage. The ability to securely store information so
> that a "Palladium" application or module can mandate that the
> information be accessible only to itself or to a set of other trusted
> components that can be identified in a cryptographically secure
> manner.

>   d. Secure input and output. A secure path from the keyboard and
> mouse to "Palladium" applications, and a secure path from "Palladium"
> applications to an identifiable region of the screen.
>
> Together, these features provide a parallel execution environment to
> the "traditional" kernel- and user-mode stacks.  The goal of
> "Palladium" is to help protect software from software; that is, to
> provide a set of features and services that a software application can
> use to defend against malicious software also running on the machine
> (viruses running in the main operating system, keyboard sniffers,
> frame grabbers, etc).  "Palladium" is not designed to provide defenses

1) Does anyone but me think this will be used for digital media copy 
protection more than anything else?  I could be off with this one, but it 
sure smells like it to me.

2) It humors me to see them take such esoteric measures when the design of 
almost every piece of software they've written to date has thown security out 
the door in the name of ease of use, and thorough software infrastructure in 
the name of virtual paper clips.

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DDDD   David Kramer                           http://thekramers.net
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DKK D  Gravity is a harsh mistress!
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