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Hardware Attestation as Monopoly Enabler

grapheneos.social

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Re: Hardware Attestation as Monopoly Enabler

#451

Post by someguyornotidk »

safety1st wrote: post #432
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…

While I agree, I think there's a better way to frame this with the public. We don't need to bring in pedo references. That looks very unhinged to most people. There's already a lot of support out there, in both public opinion and the law, for the idea that if I pay for something physical like a device, I own it. Any substantial alteration in its functionality, especially a reduction in what it can do, requires my con…

The problem with the reasonable framing you suggest is that it gets thrown out of the window the moment someone utters Protect the Children®. I'm willing to bet that most people, including those with kids like myself, don't truly believe that surrendering our basic rights to better protect the children is a rational thing to do, but they would never dare to push their opinion publicly. The few that do get all but labeled as, you guessed it, fraudster terrorist money launderer drug dealer pedophiles.

It's the the Emperor's New Clothes in real life but for morals. No amount of Rossmanning is going to help society walk back its collective hypocrisy.

Re: Hardware Attestation as Monopoly Enabler

#452

Post by Hackbraten »

gorgolo wrote: post #435
Hackbraten wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let them know. Write a letter to the CEO. And vote with your wallet and switch banks if you can. There's always a bank willing to offer you a non-app 2FA scheme.

Banks don’t do this because of profit. They do it because of decades of laws pushing in this direction. Anti-money laundering, know your customer, digitalised currency, abandoning cash, preventing tax evasion etc… it’s been getting more extensive over time.

None of the things you mentioned inherently require the user to own (and babysit) an expensive general-purpose computing device produced by tracking-obsessed adtech giants and with software obsolescence built into the product.

Re: Hardware Attestation as Monopoly Enabler

#453

Post by matheusmoreira »

charcircuit wrote: post #443
matheusmoreira wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 T…

>See kernel level anticheat nonsense. This nonsense mainly exists only because the operating system is unable to attest that it the app is secure and the right app is what is running. >It's their computer, it should run whatever software they want. I agree, but companies shouldn't be forced to match cheaters with legitimate players. Cheaters just can't secretly be cheating.

To defend my own freedom, I'm forced to defend scoundrels as well in a totally unhinged manner. So be it.

> the operating system is unable to attest

And it should remain unable. There should be no "attestation" of anything. The corporations who want such things should remain unsure of the device's "security". They should just accept it. Let them write it off as a cost of doing business or something. The optimal amount of fraud is non-zero, as they say.

> the app is secure and the right app is what is running

These machines are our personal computers. They are extensions of our minds. They are general purpose tools with limitless potential, just waiting to be shaped in accordance to our wills.

There is no such thing as being "secure" from us. Not inside our own computers. The mere idea of it is offensive. It is an affront to us all. We are the gods of these machines. To attempt to "secure" a video game of all things against us is an attempt to usurp our power.

> Cheaters just can't secretly be cheating.

Now that remote attestation is in play, the ability to do that -- forge attestations to pretend to be a corporate owned machine while remaining free and subversive -- has become key. So I'm forced to say that cheaters absolutely should be able to secretly cheat. If the cheater wants to edit his computer's memory or whatever, it's his divine right as the owner of the machine. An inability to do that means our freedom is lost.

Cheating in video games is literally nothing compared to the loss of our computer freedom. Let the entire industry go bankrupt if it must. We cannot sacrifice it no matter what, and certainly not over something as mundane such as video games. There is so much more at stake here. Ubiquitous access to cryptography. Adversarial interoperability. Our very self-determination in the digital world. Video games are nothing -- and that's coming from a fellow gamer.

Re: Hardware Attestation as Monopoly Enabler

#454

Post by inejge »

charcircuit wrote: post #436
franga2000 wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 re…

>How about being banned from online banking, government services and all social networking / communication platforms? You aren't banned. You just have to use a secure device. It's like saying that a store banned you because they stopped taking checks and started requiring a credit card since they are more secure and harder to commit fraud with. As a person you didn't lose any freedom. Freedom does not mean someone ha…

> You just have to use a secure device.

Secure as defined by a duo of monopolists. It's a contractual concept and doesn't have a firm relation to security-related characteristics. I'd trust GrapheneOS to be as secure as anything Google is capable of releasing, but that doesn't help them if Google refuses to vouch for a device running their OS. Which is also why your check/credit card analogy falls flat.

Re: Hardware Attestation as Monopoly Enabler

#455

Post by pocksuppet »

someguyornotidk wrote: post #451
safety1st wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree, I think there's a better way to frame this with the public. We don't need to bring in pedo references. That looks very unhinged to most people. There's already a lot of support out there, in both public opinion and the law, for the idea that if I pay for something physical like a device, I own it. Any substantial alteration in its functionality, especially a reduction in what it can do, requires my con…

The problem with the reasonable framing you suggest is that it gets thrown out of the window the moment someone utters Protect the Children®. I'm willing to bet that most people, including those with kids like myself, don't truly believe that surrendering our basic rights to better protect the children is a rational thing to do, but they would never dare to push their opinion publicly. The few that do get all but lab…

I don't actually believe this. People don't actually believe every car should have a GPS tracker so that if a pedophile drives a car, the police can track it. That is a ridiculous argument, and if they make it, there should be something you can say to make it blow up in their face. Unfortunately, as we've all now discovered, winning arguments isn't about being right, so I don't know which words you can say to make the obviously stupid argument sound obviously stupid.

Re: Hardware Attestation as Monopoly Enabler

#456

Post by labcomputer »

nolroz wrote: post #232
armada651 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's actively harmful to your own cause when you suggest corruption without any evidence. Just because politicians don't take action on an issue you think is important doesn't mean they're corrupt. It's more likely that the issue you think is important is simply not important to most voters. Suggesting politicians are corrupt without any evidence will make that worse. If people think their politicians are cor…

I think a hearty fuck off is warranted for responses like this. What the shit do you base the converse off? Pretend there's no corruption and there won't be any??

> Pretend there's no corruption and there won't be any??

If you look at that person's responses to others in this thread, that is exactly what they are doing. I do hope they have proper health and safety training for moving the goalposts so much.

Re: Hardware Attestation as Monopoly Enabler

#457

Post by timbooktwo »

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…

A fraudster, a terrorist, a money launderer, a drug dealer, a pedophile—these are actually a huge audience for whom the IT industry can release separate versions of the operating system and hardware. And that audience will pay for it. For the vast majority of ordinary people who consume IT benefits for free (being a commodity themselves), it makes sense to use controlled products.

Re: Hardware Attestation as Monopoly Enabler

#458

Post by fsflover »

jojobas wrote: post #377
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…

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.

TPMs can also be based on free software and our own keys. It works well with Heads and Librem Key.

Re: Hardware Attestation as Monopoly Enabler

#459

Post by whstl »

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…

I love how this is a problem caused by Big Tech (AI), with “solutions” brought by Big Tech (FAANG etc) and “countermeasures” will also be brought in by future billion-dollar industries (domestic-proxy provider BrightData is 1B already) while we will depend on existing Big Tech for “protection” (Cloudflare will remain a big player).

At this point the internet is exactly like the film Matrix, where humans are merely an implementation detail in the whole system.

Re: Hardware Attestation as Monopoly Enabler

#460

Post by labcomputer »

microtonal wrote: post #137
varispeed wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corruption. A taboo topic people prefer to downvote and pretend it does not exist. But even bigger problem is that institutions designed to prevent this from happening are not doing their job. Thousands security service and civil servants take their wages and look the other way.

The EU does regulate Google and Apple through the DSA and the DMA. I don't think most EU politicians are corrupted by these companies. I think it is far more likely that it is a lack of knowledge and incompetence. I am pretty sure that the majority of Parliament members, Council members and maybe even Commission members do not even know that there are viable alternatives outside Google (certified) Android and iOS. So…

> I don't think most EU politicians are corrupted by these companies.

Well, of course not! They're corrupted by the other companies who benefit from the DSA and DMA.

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