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Hardware Attestation as Monopoly Enabler

grapheneos.social

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Re: Hardware Attestation as Monopoly Enabler

#371

Post by bronson »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #188
subscribed wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but they aren't. Google certifies devices unpatched for the last 10 years, rooted, riddled with the malware, because the keys have leaked. Google knows and still sells the lie. But you should know better. Google is not selling the actual security, it's just protecting its business.

Google's business is advertising. Right now they don't care whether your phone is "authentic" or secure, because it doesn't cost them money. As AI-enabled bot fraud rises, they will care. Fighting this requires identifying human beings, and that requires trusted devices to be associated with human beings. We're in the foothills still, but look forward and up at where adtech is going.

How is a trusted device associated with a human being? I'm pretty sure the walls of hundreds of bot phones are running trusted Android.

Re: Hardware Attestation as Monopoly Enabler

#372

Post by mmooss »

userbinator wrote: post #350
mmooss wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In 1999, Intel received an absolutely massive amount of opposition when they decided to include a software-readable serial number in their CPUs, so much that they reversed the decision. > It turns out a significant (but hopefully decreasing) number of the population is easily coerced into anything when "security" is given as a justification. The people who opposed Intel are now telling each other how hopeless and p…

The people who opposed Intel are now telling each other how hopeless and powerless they are. I don't think those are the same people. I, for one, will continue this fight by telling everyone I know about the fact that Google is going for absolute control of the Internet, and by extension, everyone's lives. They have already become an unelected global government.

I'm not talking about individuals - where is the overwhelming pushback that Intel faced?

Re: Hardware Attestation as Monopoly Enabler

#373

Post by cool_dude85 »

otterley wrote: post #303
ryandrake wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So a vote happened, and when it didn’t go their way, huge company threatened a huge lawsuit that the township and citizens couldn’t afford, to get their way anyway. Standard corporate bullying tactic in America. The story perfectly exemplifies how little democratic control the public has over what corporations do in and do to their community.

The reason the would-be purchaser sued the state is that they had a plausible argument that the township's denial was illegal under Michigan state law. There are quotes in the article from the Governor's office that they support the construction of data centers. This isn't democracy not working; it's that the efforts need to go up to the state level in the hierarchy.

And when you find that your state senator's votes don't actually matter, will we start engaging in federal politics? I suspect, if it makes the right person a buck, that even once the federal legislature votes against it, you'll find a treaty or free trade agreement or something requires those votes to be overridden. And by the way, the data center was built and began operating 10 years ago.

Re: Hardware Attestation as Monopoly Enabler

#374

Post by heavyset_go »

GeekyBear wrote: post #86

I am reminded of the period when secure boot was being developed for PCs. Microsoft certainly wanted to be the only company whose OS was allowed to boot with secure boot turned on. Google should not be allowed to close the supposedly "open" ecosystem they created any more than Microsoft was allowed to.

When it first shipped out, Secure Boot was used to lock other OSes out on early devices, it was after pushback that it was implemented such that it allowed you to enroll your own keys.

That said, there are countless mobile devices with locked bootloaders and and boot integrity attestation that will never run anything other than OEM OSes. That's equivalent to a locked Secure Boot + UKI-like system on PCs and it's already here.

Re: Hardware Attestation as Monopoly Enabler

#375

Post by pretzel5297 »

jorvi wrote: post #364
userbinator wrote: post #161

In 1999, Intel received an absolutely massive amount of opposition when they decided to include a software-readable serial number in their CPUs, so much that they reversed the decision. Then the "security" and Trusted Computing authoritarians continued pushing for TPMs and related tech, and contributed to the rise of mobile walled gardens. Windows 11's TPM requirements were another step towards their goal. The amount…

Weird rant. TPMs are great. The modern computing landscape needs a safe place to put secrets. It's what made the iPhone (Secure Enclave is effectively a TPM) years ahead of Android in terms of security. The problem isn't the TPM, but attestation. As soon as the TPM is required to not be under your control to get access to Y, bad things happen. Hell, in actuality, the problem isn't even attestation, its policy. The EU…

Agreed. Trying to limit progress because it may be misused is attacking the wrong part of the problem and will not work.

Re: Hardware Attestation as Monopoly Enabler

#376

Post by hparadiz »

narrator wrote: post #366
Rohansi wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Closed or open source doesn't matter; it's the ability to control them that's important. People have been cracking and patching for decades without source, but they have that control. You have no idea what has been baked into the weights in the training process. In theory you could find biases and attempt to "patch" them out, but its a vastly different process vs. patching machine code. Consider what would happen i…

People are already patching these models using abliteration to prevent them from refusing any request, so it is possible for end users to change them in meaningful ways. You can download abliterated models right now from Hugging Face that will respond to all kinds of requests that frontier models refuse.

Yup there's a ton of people on HN sleeping on this new tech because they refuse to look at anything AI. We now have jail broken models but the average person on here doesn't even know how to download and try a model.

Re: Hardware Attestation as Monopoly Enabler

#377

Post by jojobas »

jorvi wrote: post #364
userbinator wrote: post #161

In 1999, Intel received an absolutely massive amount of opposition when they decided to include a software-readable serial number in their CPUs, so much that they reversed the decision. Then the "security" and Trusted Computing authoritarians continued pushing for TPMs and related tech, and contributed to the rise of mobile walled gardens. Windows 11's TPM requirements were another step towards their goal. The amount…

Weird rant. TPMs are great. The modern computing landscape needs a safe place to put secrets. It's what made the iPhone (Secure Enclave is effectively a TPM) years ahead of Android in terms of security. The problem isn't the TPM, but attestation. As soon as the TPM is required to not be under your control to get access to Y, bad things happen. Hell, in actuality, the problem isn't even attestation, its policy. The EU…

TPMs add security against a narrow case of evil maid attacks. They might be useful for corporate computing (for cargo cult compliance purposes more than actual security) but they trojan horse more of "not owning the device you bought" with it to people that don't and shouldn't care about evil maid attacks at all.

Re: Hardware Attestation as Monopoly Enabler

#378

Post by heavyset_go »

ryukoposting wrote: post #302
GeekyBear wrote: post #86

I am reminded of the period when secure boot was being developed for PCs. Microsoft certainly wanted to be the only company whose OS was allowed to boot with secure boot turned on. Google should not be allowed to close the supposedly "open" ecosystem they created any more than Microsoft was allowed to.

> the period when secure boot was being developed for PCs. You mean right now? At a firmware level, the scope of "trusted computing" is expanding with every passing year. > close the ecosystem they created any more than Microsoft was allowed to. We are in the process of allowing Microsoft to close the PC platform. TPM is required to run Windows now. Nearly every new PC ships with "secure boot" enabled, adding a new t…

It's much worse than just TPM now: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security/hardware-...

All modern PCs ship with Pluton coprocessors. The end-to-end remote attestation hardware infrastructure is all already there, waiting for someone to flip a switch and turn it on.

Re: Hardware Attestation as Monopoly Enabler

#379

Post by nananana9 »

jorvi wrote: post #364
userbinator wrote: post #161

In 1999, Intel received an absolutely massive amount of opposition when they decided to include a software-readable serial number in their CPUs, so much that they reversed the decision. Then the "security" and Trusted Computing authoritarians continued pushing for TPMs and related tech, and contributed to the rise of mobile walled gardens. Windows 11's TPM requirements were another step towards their goal. The amount…

Weird rant. TPMs are great. The modern computing landscape needs a safe place to put secrets. It's what made the iPhone (Secure Enclave is effectively a TPM) years ahead of Android in terms of security. The problem isn't the TPM, but attestation. As soon as the TPM is required to not be under your control to get access to Y, bad things happen. Hell, in actuality, the problem isn't even attestation, its policy. The EU…

Requiring "tokens" stored in "trusted modules" and 7-factor-auth for everything is not progress, it's theater. The biggest achievement of the security orthodoxy was locking me out of my email, by requiring me to read a code sent to my email to log into my email.

I -- literally -- do not care about a single "account" in any "service" I use aside from my email and bank account. Most people would add a few social media accounts to that list.

You don't need a "place to put secrets". Your iPhone app does not do anything important enough to require a "trusted chain" of cryptographic bullshit, just use a password and Google/Apple login.

Re: Hardware Attestation as Monopoly Enabler

#380

Post by edg5000 »

jdiaz5513 wrote: post #283
steelframe wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like to ride my bicycle with my friends in rides organized by the (Pacific Northwest) Cascade Bicycle Club. They require that I solve a Google reCAPTCHA in order to register for a ride. Google is already completely locking me out from being able to do that. When I try to click on the squares to select whatever items it's asking, it indefinitely loops. When I try using the audio version, it completely blocks me from…

I also had a similar issue with Cascade Bicycle Club - they chose to organize things via WhatsApp, and since I am (inexplicably) banned from opening a Meta account I was completely left out of the group and missed out on many rides/details that were only shared via WhatsApp. When I tell people that this is even possible I get wide-eyed stares — as if they never contemplated that Meta could exercise their right to ban…

You bring up a good point. There is a general lack of awareness of how much power we're giving these monopolists. As a kid, in school I was thought to be weary of drugs, STDs, pimps and other threats. This should be added to the list. Yhis is a clear cut case where governments should start educating the people about this.
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