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The Dangers of Microsoft Pluton

gabrielsieben.tech

451–460 of 554 posts

Re: The Dangers of Microsoft Pluton

#451
post #407

Is this the part where they extinguish Linux (except for where they've embraced it with WSL)?

No. MSFT has bet the business on Cloud and while the virtualization stack they use is Hyper-V, they have a TON of products running Linux under the hood in the cloud. A big chunk (I don't know the real number, but it's closer to 50% than 10%) of customer vm's on Azure are running Linux. All this to say, MSFT is highly invested in the Linux ecosystem. They would be shooting themselves in the foot to try and kill it off…

I think author meant Linux desktop Andy client facing Linux is, like the SteamOS.

Re: The Dangers of Microsoft Pluton

#452
post #66

nowadays 98% of things implying "security" are actually unwanted products, protections for "the other side" or trivial distortions of reality where, conveyed by "security" itself, the user himself becomes the product - no, I don't need protections for the side channel, I never asked for them - no, I don't need a unique identifier, who is the demented person who asked you for it - no, I am not going to glitch the powe…

no, I don't need a unique identifier People fought against that and actually won, 23 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10106870 Unfortunately, that may have been the only victory, as they slowly started introducing a lot of other stuff silently under the guise of "security". "not secure by design" nowadays comes close to being a coveted feature Absolutely. As the saying goes, "insecurity is freedom".

Hum... Looks like you didn't notice we losing.

At that same time, Microsoft started using your HDD serial as an identifier. Nowadays there are unique identifiers in most of your hardware, including the north bridge of your motherboard and the TPM that windows now requires.

Also, mobile devices got all kinds of unique identifiers from day 0.

Re: The Dangers of Microsoft Pluton

#453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technologists often have such tunnel vision that limits their concerns to tyranny driven by technology when there's plenty of low tech attacks on open society all the time. It reminds me of the good old "my password takes 2 billion years to crack, but my kneecaps only take a few seconds" metaphor about people in tech forgetting that physical coercion is, in fact, a possible attack vector for your IT security.

The low tech attacks often have low tech workarounds. DeSantis may "ban" a math book but there's nothing stopping a Florida resident from buying it and giving it to a child. There's plenty of other marketplaces and similar publishers I can pull from. When computing is controlled at a hardware level, you have far fewer competitors and market places. Working around things can be significantly more difficult and you may…

I very much disagree.

Any such bans will always take the path of least resistance to cover the largest possible population with the easiest means. Pareto Style. And I care much more about those 80% of people having access over maintaining my own. Because ultimately, those people will set cultural standards of the future, not some technologist with their fully libre laptop.

And those attacks are, as of now, not that sophisticated or blatantly censoring. An overwhelming majority already do their computing on locked down devices (running iOS, Android and ChromeOS) and the big censorship wave hasn't hit them. Every half decade or so Amazon removes a book from Kindle as a side effect of capitalism and copyright and there's a huge HN thread mistaking it for deliberate censorship, but overall it really doesn't matter.

Also, let's be completely clear that DeSantis didn't ban math books. This was an attack on ideologically inconvenient books, mostly queer literature. It's part of the push to label us as "groomers" for merely existing around underage people that has caused a spike in violence and mistrust directed towards trans people. Once our rights are sufficiently eroded, they'll go after the gays again, and after that, maybe, we'll have progressed on the fascist cataclysmic us versus them rhetoric to revive blatant antisemitism. Or racism. Who knows. But safeguarding the high end bit of tech that is not even mainstream anymore wouldn't help society out of this and being concerned for it is a very individualistic choice.

Re: The Dangers of Microsoft Pluton

#454
post #447

This is not a good article. At a technical level it's confused about a whole bunch of things: * SMM has been part of x86 for decades . The Secured Core requirements around SMM actually reduce its power. * The claimed requirement to remove the third party UEFI CA certificate from 2022 Secured Core PCs is entirely unrelated to Pluton (it's required regardless of whether Pluton is enabled or not, and even whether the CP…

You are incorrect yourself in several ways here.

> The claimed requirement to remove the third party UEFI CA certificate from 2022 Secured Core PCs is entirely unrelated to Pluton (it's required regardless of whether Pluton is enabled or not, and even whether the CPU has Pluton or not)

Pluton is de-facto a Secured Core PC implementation, and Secure Core PCs are also making this change. Thus it effects both Pluton and Secured Core, but the new requirement does not effect non-Pluton and non-Secure-Core systems. Because Secured-Core PCs are currently niche and will no longer exist once Pluton is broadly adopted, Pluton will be the first appearance of this change for the vast majority of users.

If I'm selling a 12th Gen Intel system right now, I can keep the 3rd-party UEFI certificate enabled. If I am selling a 12th Gen Secure Core PC, then this year I must disable that certificate, but my non-Secured-Core PCs can again keep it open. When Pluton arrives, that door must be shut.

You can verify this with Microsoft's Secured Core PC documentation:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/dev...

> Most of the description of Pluton is actually a description of a TPM. You don't need DICE for remote attestation. TPMs are already a hardware keystore.

To an extent. The original TPM is very finicky as documented by the comments on this post and elsewhere - even changing a RAM stick could invalidate the TPM's assertion. For this reason, the TPM was very unideal for DRM due to it's all-or-nothing approach, which Microsoft Pluton does not make the mistake of repeating, allowing for much more granular security that makes it much more easily applied. The second reason why Pluton is much more dangerous is that the TPM could be easily virtualized or hacked over the bus rendering DRM use-cases quite broken, whereas Pluton supports neither weakness, making its DRM potential (again) much more potent. Finally, using DICE, unlike a TPM, the Pluton is explicitly designed to give a computer a permanent identity that can never be erased, which (again) TPM does not guarantee.

Useful HN comment explaining: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25193346

That's actually the big reason why the Remote Assertion is an important point here. The TPM version of it was almost unusable outside of very niche business applications and BitLocker, while with DICE, the Pluton is far more potent. (After all, if TPM worked fine on it's own, why does DICE even exist?)

I think the last point to further back this view I will also add is these comments from a Microsoft employee on the subject.

https://lobste.rs/s/fdguww/dangers_microsoft_pluton#c_tdlo1r

> System firmware is already being updated via Windows Update. The discussion about Pluton and Windows Update is around Pluton getting firmware updates that way (the existing story around firmware updates for TPMs is largely not good)

Microsoft themselves states in Pluton's announcement that Pluton will hardware-integrate with Windows Update for various system firmware, through their "chip-to-cloud" security initiative. To quote them:

"One of the other major security problems solved by Pluton is keeping the system firmware up to date across the entire PC ecosystem. Today customers receive updates to their security firmware from a variety of different sources than can be difficult to manage, resulting in widespread patching issues. Pluton provides a flexible, updateable platform for running firmware that implements end-to-end security functionality authored, maintained, and updated by Microsoft. Pluton for Windows computers will be integrated with the Windows Update process in the same way that the Azure Sphere Security Service connects to IoT devices."

This is a little frustratingly vague and thus part of the reason why Pluton requires some speculation. Judging by the reference to "different sources that are difficult to manage", it appears you don't update Pluton, Pluton updates you. Pluton has an active role in your system's security, whereas TPM was only passive.

Re: The Dangers of Microsoft Pluton

#455
post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try to install a BitTorrent client on your iphone, or a game emulator, a sexually explicit game or even a browser with a different engine. All this has already happened since 2008 when the app store came out.

But you could work around it at the software level. With this tech stack, you wouldn't be able to.

Work around how? As a developer?

I'm sure there will be developer options for this too. After all, Microsoft is not going to make all the software themselves.

But they could restrict this too. For a lot of platforms you now have to sign up for a developer account and license agreement. Like on iOS, Oculus Quest..

Re: The Dangers of Microsoft Pluton

#456
post #285

I remember when Microsoft introduced driver signing, i remember articles in Slashdot and TheRegister going wild about how Microsoft was about block side-loading third party software, and only allow software which they specifically authorized to run on Windows or that they would charge large % fees to allow 3rd party software to be installed. When those these restrictive practices were introduced with iOS and to a muc…

Yep. People have been banging the drum on TPMs and similar security chips being the end of personal computing for about 18 years now. Still waiting.

Atom Bay Trail tablets were often locked to running Windows only.......

Re: The Dangers of Microsoft Pluton

#457
post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If you want to use the OS to ban a book or program or whatever, you don't need fancy hardware features, just a database of hashes pushed down via a software update. Apple wanted to do a version of this for CSAM images, it only didn't happen because they chose to tell users about it and got massive backlash. The implication that governments need more powerful DRM features to do something similar just obscures the fact…

I think it may have also been problematic legally for Apple. The US laws for CSAM are very strict and Apple wanted to do some sort of confirmation that the images are indeed CSAM which would have meant moving the images from the device to Apple servers.

Re: The Dangers of Microsoft Pluton

#458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what's stopping someone from taking photos of your precious document and posting them on 4chan? nothing. there's nothing you can do to stop that.

Try to scan banknotes with a scanner and you will see.

Linux/BSD will do it fine.

Re: The Dangers of Microsoft Pluton

#459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

As a bit of an Anarcho-Libertarian who is often in the middle of these conversations from either side, I would imagine part of the problem is your framing of this issue as if it is only coming from one direction, when there is plenty of evidence that both sides are into things like banning books[0] it's just a question of which books they want banned. [0] When It Comes to Banning Books, Both Right and Left Are Guilty…

The both sides framing is a common tactic used to make this seem even but there’s a pretty notable difference if you look at the details. For example, Newsweek’s right-wing owners love this framing but the left example is a single school district removing a book from the curriculum whereas the right wing examples are far more widespread and include books being removed from libraries. The motives are also different: banning books which depict racism positively (highly debatable in this example) is different from banning them because they reflect existence of gay people in a positive manner.

Re: The Dangers of Microsoft Pluton

#460
post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>As of January 2021 deleting SecureBoot keys and installing your own keys (for example by using KeyTool) will brick the device. This is a problem that is similar to one which has been reported on some other Lenovo laptops [0] and is likely due to a faulty firmware. If the device is stuck in a boot loop after replacing the SecureBoot keys, the only way to repair it is by replacing the mainboard of the device. [0] http…

Does reflashing the BIOS EEPROM (via hardware clip) work? Or have they "secured" that out of the question too?

I'd be surprised if that's not one of the bits of firmware that's checked on boot. So yeah, probably not possible, and not possible to downgrade.
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