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Hardware Attestation as Monopoly Enabler

grapheneos.social

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Re: Hardware Attestation as Monopoly Enabler

#411

Post by userbinator »

TZubiri wrote: post #100

Ironically, the other top article on HN right now is CVE-2024-YIKES. You can't have the cake and eat it too. Maybe we need to close some doors, especially if the barrier for publication is literally just a couple of prompts and uploading the result to distributor like npm or play store.

You can't have the cake and eat it too.

One of our Founding Fathers said it best (I know the original context was different, but it fits so well with the current theme): "Those who give up freedom for security deserve neither."

Also, "the optimal amount of crime is nonzero."

Re: Hardware Attestation as Monopoly Enabler

#412

Post by matheusmoreira »

charcircuit wrote: post #407
matheusmoreira wrote: post #386

I always say this when this topic comes up: remote attestation will be how our computing freedom dies. They've made it so that it doesn't even matter if they allow you to install whatever you want. Anything that isn't corporate owned is banned. Own your device? You "tampered" with it. You're banned. From everything. You're ostracized from digital society. You're not even a citizen, much less a second class citizen. E…

Do you consider being banned in a video game because of hacking to be an example of something killing computing freedom? The user still maintains all the freedom of doing whatever computing they want on their own machine, but if they want to play with others who don't want to play with cheaters then they have to use the official client. For people who want a high degree of freedom and be able to access as many digita…

> Do you consider being banned in a video game because of hacking to be an example of something killing computing freedom?

No. It's the constant attempts to invade our computers and "prevent" the unwanted behavior that are problematic. See kernel level anticheat nonsense. They want to own our computers.

> if they want to play with others who don't want to play with cheaters then they have to use the official client

They should be able to play with whatever client they want. It's their computer, it should run whatever software they want.

Re: Hardware Attestation as Monopoly Enabler

#413

Post by xeyownt »

charcircuit wrote: post #407
matheusmoreira wrote: post #386

I always say this when this topic comes up: remote attestation will be how our computing freedom dies. They've made it so that it doesn't even matter if they allow you to install whatever you want. Anything that isn't corporate owned is banned. Own your device? You "tampered" with it. You're banned. From everything. You're ostracized from digital society. You're not even a citizen, much less a second class citizen. E…

Do you consider being banned in a video game because of hacking to be an example of something killing computing freedom? The user still maintains all the freedom of doing whatever computing they want on their own machine, but if they want to play with others who don't want to play with cheaters then they have to use the official client. For people who want a high degree of freedom and be able to access as many digita…

I think you got it reverse.

Gaming and such are dedicated services. Fine if people agree to pay premium to have the required platform / console / etc.

General services such as communications / banking must be free, and must not require trusted hardware on the end point. The services must be designed to be secure even in the case of compromised end points. But that's against the current trend where all banks are trying to push all the responsibility on the end user because they want to reduce their costs. There are plenty of solutions but they don't go for it because it's not in their interest and they want to squeeze out any little penny of infrastructure cost.

Re: Hardware Attestation as Monopoly Enabler

#415

Post by matheusmoreira »

repelsteeltje wrote: post #404
matheusmoreira wrote: post #386

I always say this when this topic comes up: remote attestation will be how our computing freedom dies. They've made it so that it doesn't even matter if they allow you to install whatever you want. Anything that isn't corporate owned is banned. Own your device? You "tampered" with it. You're banned. From everything. You're ostracized from digital society. You're not even a citizen, much less a second class citizen. E…

Hardware attestation is like hardware DRM. It is intended to limit and restrict abundance. Abundance of clients (as a proxy for user attention) and abundance of copying, access and replay (as a proxy for "piracy"), resp. It won't matter to the masses, it won't hamper "bad actors" because hackers will find flaws instantly. It's just enshitfication.

I hope you're right. I truly do.

> hackers will find flaws instantly

Yeah.

https://tee.fail/

The ability to circumvent these cryptographic attestations and pretend to be a "pristine" corporate owned device while in fact being free will be a key strategic capability in the future.

They will no doubt pour billions into improving the technology though. I'm not sure if such a capability can be maintained over the long term. We don't have the resources.

Re: Hardware Attestation as Monopoly Enabler

#416

Post by [deleted] »

revolvingthrow wrote: post #83

Is it possible to dual-boot on android? It sounds defeatist but I no longer believe it’s possible to change course - the increasingly authoritarian governments, google and most moneyed interests are all on the same side, so it’s just a matter of when. Being on the palantir-approved google ranch for the few Apps You Need + graphene (or some other alt OS) for everything else would be quite inconvenient, but still bette…

[deleted]

Re: Hardware Attestation as Monopoly Enabler

#417

Post by greybcg »

charcircuit wrote: post #407
matheusmoreira wrote: post #386

I always say this when this topic comes up: remote attestation will be how our computing freedom dies. They've made it so that it doesn't even matter if they allow you to install whatever you want. Anything that isn't corporate owned is banned. Own your device? You "tampered" with it. You're banned. From everything. You're ostracized from digital society. You're not even a citizen, much less a second class citizen. E…

Do you consider being banned in a video game because of hacking to be an example of something killing computing freedom? The user still maintains all the freedom of doing whatever computing they want on their own machine, but if they want to play with others who don't want to play with cheaters then they have to use the official client. For people who want a high degree of freedom and be able to access as many digita…

We had fun in online games without kernel level nonsense. Why do I need to compromise my hardware when the problem is an outlier in the social graph? Anticheat is part an arms race and part just raising the bar so people cant cheat too easily. That said you can feed a video feed into a Kria K26 or even a pi or jetson and make automatic targeting completely transparant to the kernel. Then what? Hardware attestation in peripherals?

How do old boomershooter communities tackle cheaters? When and why do methods that work on a social graph fail or necessitate anticheat? I agree on the hypervisor part. Putting different applications in microvms would be good for isolation.

Re: Hardware Attestation as Monopoly Enabler

#418

Post by userbinator »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #386

I always say this when this topic comes up: remote attestation will be how our computing freedom dies. They've made it so that it doesn't even matter if they allow you to install whatever you want. Anything that isn't corporate owned is banned. Own your device? You "tampered" with it. You're banned. From everything. You're ostracized from digital society. You're not even a citizen, much less a second class citizen. E…

Keep fighting. Spread the word. Ensure that everyone you know is aware of the totalitarian implications.

The only way to sure defeat is to surrender.

Re: Hardware Attestation as Monopoly Enabler

#419

Post by JambalayaJimbo »

nananana9 wrote: post #379
jorvi wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What about Apple Wallet?

The reality is that there is software dependent on the user being unable to modify it. This safeguards the server against fraudulent users.

Re: Hardware Attestation as Monopoly Enabler

#420

Post by franga2000 »

charcircuit wrote: post #407
matheusmoreira wrote: post #386

I always say this when this topic comes up: remote attestation will be how our computing freedom dies. They've made it so that it doesn't even matter if they allow you to install whatever you want. Anything that isn't corporate owned is banned. Own your device? You "tampered" with it. You're banned. From everything. You're ostracized from digital society. You're not even a citizen, much less a second class citizen. E…

Do you consider being banned in a video game because of hacking to be an example of something killing computing freedom? The user still maintains all the freedom of doing whatever computing they want on their own machine, but if they want to play with others who don't want to play with cheaters then they have to use the official client. For people who want a high degree of freedom and be able to access as many digita…

How about being banned from online banking, government services and all social networking / communication platforms? Because that's the road we're already heading down.

What makes you think they will give us this magical hypervisor capability? It's more effort, increases the chances someone finds a bypass and takes power away from the incumbent online platforms. It's so much easier to just prevent it all. The only reason it hasn't happened yet is the amount of devices without this ability in circulation. But that number is shrinking rapidly.

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