zlacker

[return to "Remote Attestation is coming back"]
1. fleven+Lb[view] [source] 2022-07-29 23:59:09
>>gjsman+(OP)
Unpopular opinion:

Hardware-based attestation of the running software is an important security feature, especially in a world where data leaks and identity theft are rampant. Let's say I'm a healthcare provider, and I'm about to send sensitive medical data to a third party vendor. Wouldn't you prefer that this data only be able to be decrypted by a computer that can prove to the world it booted a clean OS image with all the latest security patches installed?

If the vendor wants to install some self-built OS that they trust on their computer and not update it for 5 years, that's their business, but I may not want to trust their computer to have access to my personal data.

Remote attestation gives more control to the owners of data to dictate how that data is processed on third-party machines (or even their own machines that may have been compromised). This is useful for more than just DRM.

◧◩
2. matheu+Hi[view] [source] 2022-07-30 01:18:57
>>fleven+Lb
All cryptography is important. Hardware attestation is no exception. The problem is who's using it, who owns the keys, who's exploiting who.

It's totally fine if it's used to empower and protect us, normal people. If we can use this with our own keys to cryptographically prove that our own systems haven't been tampered with, it's not evil, it's amazing technology that empowers us.

What we really don't need is billion dollar corporations using cryptography to enforce their rule over their little extra-legal digital fiefdoms where they own users and sell access to them to other corporations or create artificial scarcity out of infinite bits. Such things should be straight up illegal. I don't care how much money it costs them, they shouldn't be able to do it.

The problem is we have chip makers like Intel and AMD catering to the billion dollar corporation's use case instead of ours. They come up with technology like IME and SGX. They sell us chips that are essentially factory-pwned by mega-corps. My own computer will not obey me if it's not in some copyright owner's interest to do so and I can't override their control due to their own cryptographic roadblocks. Putting up these roadblocks to user freedom should be illegal.

[go to top]