5 ms·

In all honesty, I'm waiting for a "Trusted Computing Chip" to have a key that can be set and reset. I'd like to be able to authortatively say that a server I c

by kefka 10y ago

In all honesty, I'm waiting for a "Trusted Computing Chip" to have a key that can be set and reset. I'd like to be able to authortatively say that a server I colo/rent is indeed mine. And given Trusted computing in a different context, I could guarantee that the machine is running my code. And turned on to protect the file system, I could guarantee that the computer is a bastion, and that no foreign code I didn't approve is running. Then, turning on SELinux also provides another layer, where syscalls are prevented depending on RBAC level. I could certainly see a whole lot of nice high security machines made available if AMD went the open route about this... But alas, these things usually only talk about Security from the user, to Media companies. meh, is all I can say.

wolfgke 10y ago
> In all honesty, I'm waiting for a "Trusted Computing Chip" to have a key that can be set and reset. The "trusted" in "trusted computing" is used as it is defined in IT security (but not in the sense how an "ordinary user" understands it). In this case "trusted" means that one can trust the computation since the user has no option to change it/have control over it. Because if they had, we could not trust the result of the computation since the user might have modified something etc. In other words: If the user has such a freedom, we cannot trust the computation, but we have to trust the user. Thus "trusted computing" that gives freedom to the machine owner is impossible. If you buy a PC or laptop this is often not what you want (at least for the HN audience). IOW: Here in most cases you don't want trusted computing. On the other hand, if you rent a server, you would love to have the trust that the data center provider cannot intercept/modify etc. what you do on the server. For this situation you consider the machine owner (datacenter operator) as potentially malicious and want technology where you can trust the computation.
- kefka 10y ago
  And I would accuse you of thinking in the narrow line of "TPM for media companies to control your hardware". There are other ways to go about this.. Think of the ORWL. It's a heavy crypto system that will delete its keys if it's tampered with (heat, cold, shock, pressure, penetration). If I hand these keys to someone else, they have control over the software installed. If they lose the keys, they're out of luck. If the device thinks there's a tampering, they're out of luck. Now, this may be installed in my datacenter. Awesome. If I mess with it, it's easy to detect. Because everything auto-deletes on tamper. So it is my device by possession, but someone else controls it as I choose for the duration they have the keys. This would be a great way to run secure systems, as I mentioned further up. Yes, I can run it in a datacenter, but I don't have to trust the datacenter. It's not impenetrable, but it's a heck of a lot better than other solutions. (Yes, I'm still waiting for reasonably fast homomorphic encryption and processing. But I know that'll be a long time away. Even if Signal is doing some work on that area, the processing side is still about 7000x too slow.)

by kefka 10y ago

wolfgke 10y ago

> In all honesty, I'm waiting for a "Trusted Computing Chip" to have a key that can be set and reset. The "trusted" in "trusted computing" is used as it is defined in IT security (but not in the sense how an "ordinary user" understands it). In this case "trusted" means that one can trust the computation since the user has no option to change it/have control over it. Because if they had, we could not trust the result of the computation since the user might have modified something etc. In other words: If the user has such a freedom, we cannot trust the computation, but we have to trust the user. Thus "trusted computing" that gives freedom to the machine owner is impossible. If you buy a PC or laptop this is often not what you want (at least for the HN audience). IOW: Here in most cases you don't want trusted computing. On the other hand, if you rent a server, you would love to have the trust that the data center provider cannot intercept/modify etc. what you do on the server. For this situation you consider the machine owner (datacenter operator) as potentially malicious and want technology where you can trust the computation.

kefka 10y ago
And I would accuse you of thinking in the narrow line of "TPM for media companies to control your hardware". There are other ways to go about this.. Think of the ORWL. It's a heavy crypto system that will delete its keys if it's tampered with (heat, cold, shock, pressure, penetration). If I hand these keys to someone else, they have control over the software installed. If they lose the keys, they're out of luck. If the device thinks there's a tampering, they're out of luck. Now, this may be installed in my datacenter. Awesome. If I mess with it, it's easy to detect. Because everything auto-deletes on tamper. So it is my device by possession, but someone else controls it as I choose for the duration they have the keys. This would be a great way to run secure systems, as I mentioned further up. Yes, I can run it in a datacenter, but I don't have to trust the datacenter. It's not impenetrable, but it's a heck of a lot better than other solutions. (Yes, I'm still waiting for reasonably fast homomorphic encryption and processing. But I know that'll be a long time away. Even if Signal is doing some work on that area, the processing side is still about 7000x too slow.)