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The Dangers of Microsoft Pluton

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Re: The Dangers of Microsoft Pluton

#111

Post by yrro »

eertvertvbw wrote: post #58
ftyhbhyjnjk wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you can install on YOUR pc will be at the sole mercy of microsoft/or maybe someone else.... That's the cusp of it. Not that it can be used for good, but that it sets the way for heavy misuse by large corporations. Wait a few years. Smaller companies won't even be allowed to order high end cpu's. You'll be at 100% mercy of these corporations. If after 2 years they decide to brick your pc, they'll just do it. You…

still waiting on the secure boot lockdown everyone has insisted is coming for the better part of two decades...

They're working on it. Microsoft's latest attempt is to disable the 3rd party UEFI CA by default.

Re: The Dangers of Microsoft Pluton

#112

Post by worldofmatthew »

eertvertvbw wrote: post #58
ftyhbhyjnjk wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you can install on YOUR pc will be at the sole mercy of microsoft/or maybe someone else.... That's the cusp of it. Not that it can be used for good, but that it sets the way for heavy misuse by large corporations. Wait a few years. Smaller companies won't even be allowed to order high end cpu's. You'll be at 100% mercy of these corporations. If after 2 years they decide to brick your pc, they'll just do it. You…

still waiting on the secure boot lockdown everyone has insisted is coming for the better part of two decades...

I'm pretty sure some Windows 10 tablets from 2014 to 2016 are locked down to only allow Windows on them (Not S-mode).

Re: The Dangers of Microsoft Pluton

#113

Post by feanaro »

Ycombigatorz wrote: post #95
Aeolun wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you have root Because god forbid you have control of your own PC?

Because if you have control, so many numerous other parties.

This doesn't follow at all. Those other parties cannot authenticate as me.

Re: The Dangers of Microsoft Pluton

#114

Post by jhanschoo »

bodge5000 wrote: post #108
zaptheimpaler wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You cannot boot the other OS at all if secure boot is enabled and Microsoft drops support for the 3rd party UEFI CA list. The machine will refuse to boot any kernel that has not been signed by the CAs already included in the machine. This is typically only Microsoft and sometimes the OEM like Lenovo or Dell.

Could this be disabled by the user? Presumably doing so would mean you cannot boot Windows, but if thats a trade off Microsoft is forcing me to make, I'll accept it. If you can't, it goes without saying that that is unacceptable

Yes, you can disable secure boot.

Re: The Dangers of Microsoft Pluton

#115

Post by thriftwy »

I don't see how this Babel tower of acronyms will not fail in a spectacular fashion, such as producing malware which is run upon receipt, cannot be by any action removed from your PC and installs crypto miner and ransomware on it.

Re: The Dangers of Microsoft Pluton

#116

Post by 0xedd »

ajvs wrote: post #87
aaronbrethorst wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ron DeSantis doesn't need hardware-level DRM to ban math books. https://www.baynews9.com/fl/tampa/news/2022/05/06/florida-ba... If you're worried about book bannings in states like Florida, DeSantis is up for reelection in just over 3 months . Go volunteer or donate money to his opponent (probably Charlie Crist).

Mein Kampf is a banned book which I don't think many would disagree with. There are many other such books filled with propaganda that are rightly banned. I don't see why other propaganda-filled books that are being pushed on unsuspecting children shouldn't be banned too, unless the only reason is that you dislike the direction of the propaganda.

You are conflating ban and don't-push.

If today it's "obvious" what's bad; When this generation dies off, who is appointed master of the universe and decides what's bad? It won't be you. It'll be the guys with the money; See Pluton. They're already paving the way for just that (at least in tech and what your wallet must must must spend). But, I digress.

You shouldn't ban books. You should teach morals.

My friend, Swim, who is a Jew living in Israel doesn't support banning Mein Kampf. So much so that when Swim's friend ordered it from Amazon, neither opposed it. Curriculum teaches about Hitler's rise to power and the abuse of his people to do so. That's more than enough to understand not to follow in his footstep. Swim's friend was interested in Hitler's political prowess.

I'm not interested in Mein Kampf. But, if someone is, he most surely has the right to read it. Kill the way some fanatics did because of it? No, that's immoral.

Who decides morality? That's complex, I think. But, I also think it is an innate intuition that lives in all of us.

Re: The Dangers of Microsoft Pluton

#117

Post by palata »

Ycombigatorz wrote: post #95
Aeolun wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you have root Because god forbid you have control of your own PC?

Because if you have control, so many numerous other parties.

Those are independent. Having root access does not mean that other parties do, but more importantly, NOT having root does not mean AT ALL that other parties don't.

Re: The Dangers of Microsoft Pluton

#118

Post by p_l »

fsflover wrote: post #97
p_l wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, they are possible... And they are implemented using all the evil things like Secure Boot, TPM, and Pluton. MS remote attestation doesn't require remote cloud or anything like that, I recall it supporting air-gapped environment from the start (guess why, the top-price enterprise clients want that , including resigning windows with their own secure boot keys). Disclaimer: for various reasons open source remote att…

> And they are implemented using all the evil things like Secure Boot, TPM, and Pluton. There is nothing evil with TPM when you fully control it. See: Librem Key.

You either don't remember or wasn't there when TPMs were first talked about, in either case I envy you then.

And yes, there's nothing evil involved if they are owner controlled, something that honestly was heavily Microsoft pushed because they do have clients that insist on them - the DRM functionality in intel ME has keys controlled by broadcasting associations instead (this is why you can't stream HQ on Linux from official sources), same with part of why AMD PSP got some uncontrolled bits (the blackmail goes that if you don't do that, customers will quickly find they can't stream netflix/whatever in high quality on your hw and will stop buying it).

Personally I believe that owner-control of hw should be enshrined in law, just like right to repair and modify, along with laws against deceptive "looks and quacks like a sale, is actually a lease" practices

Re: The Dangers of Microsoft Pluton

#119

Post by zaptheimpaler »

bodge5000 wrote: post #108
zaptheimpaler wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You cannot boot the other OS at all if secure boot is enabled and Microsoft drops support for the 3rd party UEFI CA list. The machine will refuse to boot any kernel that has not been signed by the CAs already included in the machine. This is typically only Microsoft and sometimes the OEM like Lenovo or Dell.

Could this be disabled by the user? Presumably doing so would mean you cannot boot Windows, but if thats a trade off Microsoft is forcing me to make, I'll accept it. If you can't, it goes without saying that that is unacceptable

You can disable it for now. But there is no guarantee that you will always be able to.

Personally I think its very likely MS will eventually push to strongarm OEMs into locking secure boot to be enabled. All it will take is another round of "security improvements" and the public eats it up. The market would then fragment into laptops that can only run Windows and maybe more expensive laptops that allow you to disable secure boot. If the number of people who actually care enough to vote with spending a few extra hundred $ remains as low as it always has, over a decade it will drive open laptops to become wildly overpriced and eventually cease to exist.

Re: The Dangers of Microsoft Pluton

#120

Post by retcon »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #52
Gh0stRAT wrote: post #46

I'm completely missing how his example of a Word document that can only be opened by approved users on approved hardware within the corporation is supposed to be a bad thing. Honestly, that sounds pretty fantastic. I've been using 3rd party tools/extensions to do this sort of thing in corporate and government environments for years, but having the attestation go all the way down to the hardware level is a big value-a…

The capacity for abuse is huge, way beyong the potential benefits. From the USA, we get news of banned book in some states. When I read that, my head goes back to my european history, and I reach the Godwin point very quickly. Those kind of people will abuse such system to prevent things to be shared. It will be used for putting DRM on everything and create a more and more closed web. It will be used by corporations…

In the UK movie screening used to be and probably still is decided at the smallest municipal level of town councils, see The Life of Brian.
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