[OT] Trusted hardware

[Ludovic Courtès]

"Jonathan S. Shapiro" <address@hidden> writes:

> This is correct -- except that I don't think this is an oxymoron. We're
> working on doing that very thing. Please continue to be skeptical until
> (and after) we can demonstrate it.

I have mostly two griefs against so-called "trusted hardware":

1.  I see no reason why I should /fully trust/ the vendor of that hardware
    just because they say it's "trusted"; again, that's a "single point
    of trust", and "trusted hardware" is about imposing this trust
    relationship;

2.  technically, there is no such thing as "tamper-proof hardware"
    (which is implied by "trusted hardware"), IMO.

Regarding (1), to me, it looks like we are trying to eliminate a problem
(mutual suspicion) by circumventing it ("ok, people are mutually
suspicious, but let's /assume/ that they all trust this single
authority").

As for (2), I believe that "dongles" that used to be needed by some
proprietary software so that it could just run used to be circumvented
by crackers.  As for smart cards, they are mostly "tamper-proof" because
researchers finding how to "crack" them are put to jail (there was a
famous case years ago in France, but I can't remember the name of the
guy).  I also remember a talk by Jean-Jacques Quisquater about the use
of electro-magnetic analysis as a means to crack smart cards (he's also
advocating counter-measures on the other hand).

So I'm technically skeptical (but I know there's a lot of work going on
in that area), and "ethically" opposed to that approach.  ;-)

Thanks,
Ludovic.