5 ms·

The problem isn't the capability of remote attestation. The problem is who's using it, i.e. who's defining what "security" means. As noted above, for a compan

The problem isn't the capability of remote attestation. The problem is who's using it, i.e. who's defining what "security" means. As noted above, for a company, "security" often means intentionally inhibiting my freedom, not actually securing anything I care about. We would benefit from a better public discussion of what "security" encompasses. Else, we risk conflating "what MS wants me to do with my computer" with "preventing hackers from stealing my credit card number". Imagine a world where you could submit personal information to a company, with the technological assurance that this information would not leave that company... and you could verify this with remote attestation of the software running on that company's servers.

userbinator 4y ago
Imagine a world where you could submit personal information to a company, with the technological assurance that this information would not leave that company... and you could verify this with remote attestation of the software running on that company's servers. That's a classic "road to hell paved with good intentions". The approaching reality is more like: Imagine a world where to be allowed to use the Internet you will be mandated to run certain software, which reports your personal information to a company you are obligated to use, and whose use of that information is absolutely something you do not want. Yes, the problem is indeed "who's using it". Unfortunately you aren't going to be able to decide either, and it will certainly be used against you.
- alexhsamuel 4y ago
  Indeed! My imagination was tongue-in-cheek; we're never going to get that.
nonrandomstring 4y ago
> The problem is who's using it, who's defining what "security" means? Ask that question every time you see the word "security" written. There is no such word as bare security. - security for who? - security from who? - security to what ends? Much of the time security is a closed system, fixed-sum game. My security means your loss of it.
- ChadNauseam 4y ago
  Can you give some examples?
  - judge2020 4y ago
    Let's go with online games, which is mentioned in the article. This focus will specifically be on Riot, but any game publisher can perform this. > - security for who? Riot Games > - security from who? The users of their software. > - security to what ends? Ensuring a device (A) is running windows (B) is running unmodified Windows system files (C) a rootkit that replaces syscall behavior isn't installed All of this is an effort to prevent cheats that wallhack/aimbot or otherwise give the player an unfair advantage - at least, it ensures the cheats aren't loaded early enough to where their anti-cheat is unable to detect their influence on the game process. While i say 'Riot Games' is who benefits, it's all at the request of their users; you can search for 'hacker' or 'cheats' on r/leagueoflegends and see tons of posts from years ago complaining about cheaters scripting (automatically using abilities in the best possible way) and gaining an unfair advantage against them. Every posts' comments will boil down to "Riot really should figure out how to stop these cheaters". It's a cat-and-mouse game, but it'll be a lot easier to catch the mouse once they can safely enable the remote attestation requirement and only lose 0.1% of their players. On the less moral side, this can also be applied to single-player games to reduce the chances of a game's anti-piracy protections being cracked.
    - Schroedingersat 4y ago
      We don't need to replace trust with complete submission to a third party. Just build trust. Game servers don't need to be a single festering pool of every user who purchased the title. You can just play games with a community that has accountability. It's like putting a camera network and automated tranq drones in every playground so kids don't play tag 'wrong'. This insanity of trying to conflate complete submission to a third party with trust or security when in reality it provides neither because that party is an adversary is a society-wide mental illness.
      - 4y ago
django_hero 4y ago
It can be used to heavily track user around the web.
mike_hearn 4y ago
"Imagine a world where you could submit personal information to a company, with the technological assurance that this information would not leave that company... and you could verify this with remote attestation of the software running on that company's servers." That world already exists, it just doesn't get used much. You can do this with Intel SGX and AMD SEV. The obvious place for this is blocking cloud providers from accessing personal data. For example, it could be used to resolve concerns about using US based services from Europe, because any data uploaded to such a service can be encrypted such that it's only processed in a certain way (this is what RA does). RA gets demonized by people making the arguments found in the sibling comment, but they end up throwing the baby out with the bathwater. There are tons of privacy, control and decentralization problems that look intractable until you throw RA in the mix, then suddenly solving them becomes easy. Instead of needing teams of cryptographers to invent ad-hoc and app specific protocols for every app (which in reality they never do), you write a client that RAs the server to check that it's running software that won't leak your private information as part of the connect sequence.
- account42 4y ago
  > The obvious place for this is blocking cloud providers from accessing personal data. For example, it could be used to resolve concerns about using US based services from Europe, because any data uploaded to such a service can be encrypted such that it's only processed in a certain way (this is what RA does). This will not work because the concerns about US based services are legal ones due to access requirements by the US government which cannot be solved by technical restrictions while still complying with those requirements.
  - mike_hearn 4y ago
    The US Gov requirements don't require that cloud services make as much data available to themselves as possible, only that they provide access to what they do have (otherwise end to end encrypted messengers would already be illegal and shut down).
    - autoexec 4y ago

userbinator 4y ago

Imagine a world where you could submit personal information to a company, with the technological assurance that this information would not leave that company... and you could verify this with remote attestation of the software running on that company's servers. That's a classic "road to hell paved with good intentions". The approaching reality is more like: Imagine a world where to be allowed to use the Internet you will be mandated to run certain software, which reports your personal information to a company you are obligated to use, and whose use of that information is absolutely something you do not want. Yes, the problem is indeed "who's using it". Unfortunately you aren't going to be able to decide either, and it will certainly be used against you.

alexhsamuel 4y ago
Indeed! My imagination was tongue-in-cheek; we're never going to get that.

nonrandomstring 4y ago

> The problem is who's using it, who's defining what "security" means? Ask that question every time you see the word "security" written. There is no such word as bare security. - security for who? - security from who? - security to what ends? Much of the time security is a closed system, fixed-sum game. My security means your loss of it.

ChadNauseam 4y ago
Can you give some examples?
- judge2020 4y ago
  Let's go with online games, which is mentioned in the article. This focus will specifically be on Riot, but any game publisher can perform this. > - security for who? Riot Games > - security from who? The users of their software. > - security to what ends? Ensuring a device (A) is running windows (B) is running unmodified Windows system files (C) a rootkit that replaces syscall behavior isn't installed All of this is an effort to prevent cheats that wallhack/aimbot or otherwise give the player an unfair advantage - at least, it ensures the cheats aren't loaded early enough to where their anti-cheat is unable to detect their influence on the game process. While i say 'Riot Games' is who benefits, it's all at the request of their users; you can search for 'hacker' or 'cheats' on r/leagueoflegends and see tons of posts from years ago complaining about cheaters scripting (automatically using abilities in the best possible way) and gaining an unfair advantage against them. Every posts' comments will boil down to "Riot really should figure out how to stop these cheaters". It's a cat-and-mouse game, but it'll be a lot easier to catch the mouse once they can safely enable the remote attestation requirement and only lose 0.1% of their players. On the less moral side, this can also be applied to single-player games to reduce the chances of a game's anti-piracy protections being cracked.
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    We don't need to replace trust with complete submission to a third party. Just build trust. Game servers don't need to be a single festering pool of every user who purchased the title. You can just play games with a community that has accountability. It's like putting a camera network and automated tranq drones in every playground so kids don't play tag 'wrong'. This insanity of trying to conflate complete submission to a third party with trust or security when in reality it provides neither because that party is an adversary is a society-wide mental illness.
    - 4y ago

django_hero 4y ago

It can be used to heavily track user around the web.

mike_hearn 4y ago

"Imagine a world where you could submit personal information to a company, with the technological assurance that this information would not leave that company... and you could verify this with remote attestation of the software running on that company's servers." That world already exists, it just doesn't get used much. You can do this with Intel SGX and AMD SEV. The obvious place for this is blocking cloud providers from accessing personal data. For example, it could be used to resolve concerns about using US based services from Europe, because any data uploaded to such a service can be encrypted such that it's only processed in a certain way (this is what RA does). RA gets demonized by people making the arguments found in the sibling comment, but they end up throwing the baby out with the bathwater. There are tons of privacy, control and decentralization problems that look intractable until you throw RA in the mix, then suddenly solving them becomes easy. Instead of needing teams of cryptographers to invent ad-hoc and app specific protocols for every app (which in reality they never do), you write a client that RAs the server to check that it's running software that won't leak your private information as part of the connect sequence.

account42 4y ago
> The obvious place for this is blocking cloud providers from accessing personal data. For example, it could be used to resolve concerns about using US based services from Europe, because any data uploaded to such a service can be encrypted such that it's only processed in a certain way (this is what RA does). This will not work because the concerns about US based services are legal ones due to access requirements by the US government which cannot be solved by technical restrictions while still complying with those requirements.
- mike_hearn 4y ago
  The US Gov requirements don't require that cloud services make as much data available to themselves as possible, only that they provide access to what they do have (otherwise end to end encrypted messengers would already be illegal and shut down).
  - autoexec 4y ago