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The Dangers of Microsoft Pluton

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Re: The Dangers of Microsoft Pluton

#361

Post by raxxorraxor »

underclocked wrote: post #348
acdha wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's worth reading https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html again just to see how prescient Stallman was. I think it’s also worth asking why he didn’t have more impact despite pretty clearly seeing this problem. Part of the answer has to be resource disparities but I don’t think it’s just that - Linux didn’t really capitalize at all on Microsoft’s lost decade, and much of the innovation in security has…

[dead]

He is a character with certain arrogance and some of his jokes might not be too funny, but these are basically smears and his detractors don't seem convincing at all to be honest.

Re: The Dangers of Microsoft Pluton

#362

Post by InitialBP »

ajross wrote: post #343
api wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason the OSS community has had no impact is that it's never managed to produce software that regular non-tech-geeks want to use. The reason it's never managed to do that is lack of an economic model to finance the incredible amount of work required to make software usable by normal people. I've been saying this ad nauseum forever and I'm not the only one. A related problem is that the OSS world is mostly tech e…

> the OSS community [...] never managed to produce software that regular non-tech-geeks want to use That's true, barely, only if you equate "software" with "things that draw stuff presented on a display to a user". Regular non-tech-geeks are using open source software (in the real sense, meaning instructions given to a computer to make it do something) pervasively, everywhere, every day, on all their devices (yes, ev…

Out of sight, out of mind.

You are totally right that open source is powering countless things people use regularly but I expect most people don't even know what open source software is, much less care about it.

Re: The Dangers of Microsoft Pluton

#363

Post by q-big »

SQueeeeeL wrote: post #24
userbinator wrote: post #11

What is to prevent school WiFi from one day requiring a Pluton assertion that your Windows PC hasn’t been tampered with before you can join the network? Remote attestation is the true enemy of your freedom. The power of the authoritarian corporatocracy to force you to use only the (entire) systems they control. It's worth reading https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html again just to see how prescient Sta…

Damn, now I'm nostalgic for the older days of hacker news where RMS was quoted every other post. The community is forgetting it's roots.

> Damn, now I'm nostalgic for the older days of hacker news where RMS was quoted every other post. The community is forgetting it's roots.

Keep in mind that now many of the people who post on HN earn a lot of money by working a company for which it is part of the business model to track users and collect data about them (officially for advertisement purposes).

Re: The Dangers of Microsoft Pluton

#364

Post by shreyshnaccount »

ajross wrote: post #343
api wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason the OSS community has had no impact is that it's never managed to produce software that regular non-tech-geeks want to use. The reason it's never managed to do that is lack of an economic model to finance the incredible amount of work required to make software usable by normal people. I've been saying this ad nauseum forever and I'm not the only one. A related problem is that the OSS world is mostly tech e…

> the OSS community [...] never managed to produce software that regular non-tech-geeks want to use That's true, barely, only if you equate "software" with "things that draw stuff presented on a display to a user". Regular non-tech-geeks are using open source software (in the real sense, meaning instructions given to a computer to make it do something) pervasively, everywhere, every day, on all their devices (yes, ev…

yeah, over the last few years I've seen more and more companies launching open source software, and hosting it as a service. it seems to be working well. on the software side they don't sell a product, but a service.

Re: The Dangers of Microsoft Pluton

#366

Post by oneoff786 »

cesarb wrote: post #267
zaptheimpaler wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same things that make it good in a corporate environment can make it abusive in a personal machine. By forcing the kernel to be untamperable, Microsoft can arbitrarily enforce ANY policy they choose on your PC. They could spy on every single piece of network communication. They could ban any given software from being able to run on Windows - maybe Chrome, maybe Steam, any competitor at all. They actually could ea…

> They could ban any given software from being able to run on Windows - maybe Chrome, maybe Steam, any competitor at all. IIRC, this was the reason Valve created SteamOS: they feared Microsoft would use their control over Windows so that the only viable software store on PCs would be Microsoft's own store.

Like the App Store.

Hopefully we get the digital markets act over here for similar protections

Re: The Dangers of Microsoft Pluton

#367

Post by katbyte »

api wrote: post #297
Aeolun wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This is the root of the pro market / mainstream market split. For the pro market people want control. Pros also generally know a bit more about how to use that control and tend to be less likely to end up getting pwned immediately. For regular users people just want shit that works. Not having control is a feature, because if you have control then the malware you are tricked into installing from "ɡeτflrêfox.com" also…

You can also disable all the system integrity protection stuff on macOS pretty easily if you do want to mess around where apple rather people not.

Re: The Dangers of Microsoft Pluton

#368

Post by albinofrenchy »

the_af wrote: post #356
underclocked wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[dead]

That's character assassination and it has nothing to do with Stallman's prescient warnings, which have proven more or less true. Also, Stallman != Linux. Also also, his "rape" remarks have been mischaracterized but also came pretty late in the game, and had nothing to with with Linux's alleged lack of impact. Linux existed and was successfully deployed decades before any of these remarks. I really expect better from…

I think it's a pretty good explanation of why he didn't gain more traction than he had -- he's always been a zealot with a proclivity of misguided rants that he proclaims loud and far.

Re: The Dangers of Microsoft Pluton

#369

Post by viraptor »

raxxorraxor wrote: post #316
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain what is the issue with TPM? I get the issue with Pluton but TPM is only a dedicated and certified secure key and random number generator that does a better job than CPUs doing it in software, and it's also a secure enclave for storing your encryption keys. Would you rather store the keys in memory where they can be easily grabbed by malicious apps like Mimikatz? Macs had the same feature for years in…

TPM has features like remote attestation and is in general a mechanism to bind data to hardware, which is interesting for DRM purposes. Sure, there are theoretical attacks on memory, but they are far less relevant for security than the penalties I have to accept with TPM being widely established. Not that there aren't different means, but TPM also creates unique hashes of your system which only reinforces the problem…

> which is interesting for DRM purposes.

You're thinking of SGX enclaves not TPM.

> TPM also creates unique hashes of your system

It doesn't. Your system creates hashes and appends to lists signed by TPM. And the point of those hashes is to be not unique, but verifiability matching known values.

Re: The Dangers of Microsoft Pluton

#370

Post by CoffeeCollector »

choeger wrote: post #340

I think the fear mongering is spot-on and there's no way back. The only positive way forward would be a non-profit org taking over the role of key manager. No for-profit org and no government should be in the position to control computing. So instead of blocking the technology that inevitably will come (or is already there), let's focus on legislation that prevents corporate entities from controlling computation.

Privacy and user empowerment stopped around 2007 and most technological advances suit the capital and political classes for their benefit, hegemony and ability to control us. It’s time to stop buying new hardware and to be content using older hardware to halt the erosion of our privacy and maintain what little independence we have.
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