4 ms·

They already said it is OS agnostic. MS 2020 is far away from MS 2010. With regards to the auditing need, can you audit a CPU down to the silicon level today?

intricatedetail 6y ago
They could set a new standard. I think when it comes to security these things should be transparent. You know, documentation can say one thing and implementation another.
- gotstad 6y ago
  Exactly my point. You're asking to set a new standard that even todays CPUs does not adhere to, even though they process equally sensitive data and operations. Seemingly, because you are sceptical of MS. And to your point about documentation vs implementation, it would not be difficult for anyone, to state one thing in the documentation and produce another thing, unless perhaps, you give access to the manufacturing facilities.
mhh__ 6y ago
You probably could to some degree but ultimately even if you did what ARM does and have a machine readable specification and had a way of verifying it on chip, you could still pull a VW-Thompson hybrid where the chip hijacks that process, i.e. detects when it is under audit. I'm reminded of Christopher Domas' excellent talk/s on finding undocumented X86 instructions, if there are any backdoors in a modern processor they'll probably under some hyper-obscure (register, stack etc.) state even if they did use an undocumented instruction.
raxxorrax 6y ago
> MS 2020 is far away from MS 2010. I haven't seen evidence of this. Their OS is at least as user hostile as before and they desperately seek developers. If I have a specific technical problem I have to slay hundreds of sales people before I find someone with real expertise. That they aren't as dominant as before is probably due to the fact that they have few developers and need to regain some. Financially Office is probably the largest income and sure, the standard corporate AD solutions are wide spread. But their cloud tech seems to be restricted to very large companies and I haven't seen much of it.
- gotstad 6y ago
  I am not sure you were ever looking for evidence in the first place. WSL and .NET as open-source? Their R&D budget in 2019 was twice that in 2010, meanwhile sales and marketing budget increased by 30%. Their Productivity and Business Processes (which includes Office, Dynamics, ERP and LinkedIn) accounted for 1/3 of global sales revenue in 2019. Sure, there are some things that have stayed the same in the last 10 years, but of all the FAANGS I would argue that MS is the company that changed the most in the last 10 years.

intricatedetail 6y ago

They could set a new standard. I think when it comes to security these things should be transparent. You know, documentation can say one thing and implementation another.

gotstad 6y ago
Exactly my point. You're asking to set a new standard that even todays CPUs does not adhere to, even though they process equally sensitive data and operations. Seemingly, because you are sceptical of MS. And to your point about documentation vs implementation, it would not be difficult for anyone, to state one thing in the documentation and produce another thing, unless perhaps, you give access to the manufacturing facilities.

mhh__ 6y ago

You probably could to some degree but ultimately even if you did what ARM does and have a machine readable specification and had a way of verifying it on chip, you could still pull a VW-Thompson hybrid where the chip hijacks that process, i.e. detects when it is under audit. I'm reminded of Christopher Domas' excellent talk/s on finding undocumented X86 instructions, if there are any backdoors in a modern processor they'll probably under some hyper-obscure (register, stack etc.) state even if they did use an undocumented instruction.

raxxorrax 6y ago

> MS 2020 is far away from MS 2010. I haven't seen evidence of this. Their OS is at least as user hostile as before and they desperately seek developers. If I have a specific technical problem I have to slay hundreds of sales people before I find someone with real expertise. That they aren't as dominant as before is probably due to the fact that they have few developers and need to regain some. Financially Office is probably the largest income and sure, the standard corporate AD solutions are wide spread. But their cloud tech seems to be restricted to very large companies and I haven't seen much of it.

gotstad 6y ago
I am not sure you were ever looking for evidence in the first place. WSL and .NET as open-source? Their R&D budget in 2019 was twice that in 2010, meanwhile sales and marketing budget increased by 30%. Their Productivity and Business Processes (which includes Office, Dynamics, ERP and LinkedIn) accounted for 1/3 of global sales revenue in 2019. Sure, there are some things that have stayed the same in the last 10 years, but of all the FAANGS I would argue that MS is the company that changed the most in the last 10 years.