Palladium: A must or a menace?

Microsoft's upcoming Palladium architecture for 'Trusted Computing' may secure PCs, but it also threatens to turn people's computers into spies.

At the USENIX Security Conference held in San Francisco recently, Microsoft developers touted the company's upcoming Palladium architecture as technology that would enhance privacy, stymie piracy and increase a corporation's control over its computers.

Others, however, see a more nefarious role for the security software.

Instead of just keeping hackers out, critics say programs like Palladium could also block computer users from certain data. For example, the technology could be used as a policing mechanism that bars people from material stored on their own computers if they have not met licensing and other requirements.

"The perception is that the security protects content on the user's PC from third parties," said a security consultant who goes by the moniker of Lucky Green. "That's wrong."

The conflict highlights a growing debate over "trusted computers" - machines equipped with the technology to wall off data, secure communications and verify the characteristics of their system. Although military and intelligence agencies have used such systems, the concept has been met with opposition in mainstream consumer markets.

The reason: The masses don't necessarily trust the companies developing "trusted computing" technology.

Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation and co-founder of the GNU project for creating free versions of key Unix programs, lampooned the technology in a recent column as "treacherous computing".

"Large media corporations, together with computer companies such as Microsoft and Intel, are planning to make your computer obey them instead of you," he wrote. "Proprietary programs have included malicious features before, but this plan would make it universal."

He and others, such as Cambridge University professor Ross Anderson, argue that the intention of so-called trusted computing is to block data from consumers and other PC users, not from attackers. The main goal of such technology, they say, is "digital rights management", or the control of copyrighted content. Under today's laws, copyright owners maintain control over content even when it resides on someone else's PC - but many activists are challenging that authority.

Microsoft denies that Palladium is designed as a mechanism to police consumers' use of content. The company plans to release the technology in 2005, as part of a major update to Windows. "We get very strong feedback from our customers about the freedom for data migration," said Peter Biddle, a Microsoft product manager pushing the initiative. "We are not going to use Palladium to make our customers - our favourite people - angry at us."

In fact, Microsoft sees the initial markets for the Palladium technology to be in the business realm. The new software and hardware could secure VPNs (virtual private networks) by allowing administrators to positively identify computers on the network. Corporate executives, concerned that embarrassing email messages might end up appearing in court and in the news, could require employees to use trusted computing technologies that could throw away the digital keys to any message more than one month old. Such considerations could make Palladium and other trusted technologies a fairly easy sell to businesses.

It's consumers that could be the hitch.

Concerns about trusted computing initiatives have been fuelled by policies and legislation such as the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which has been used repeatedly by the music industry, movie studios and even the software industry to attack programmers and consumers who break the copyright protections. While several challenges are being waged in court, opponents worry that "trusted" technologies will pre-empt these cases.

Moreover, US lawmakers have introduced controversial bills this year that could strengthen copyright controls over computers and the data they store. A measure proposed by Senator Ernest "Fritz" Hollings, a South Carolina Democrat, would require hardware makers to include anti-copying mechanisms in all new consumer electronic devices. Another bill promoted by Representative Howard Berman, a California Democrat, would allow copyright owners to use technical measures, including unauthorised access and attacks on file-sharing networks, to prevent copyright infringement.

Such pro-security measures have gained momentum in the post-11 September political climate, which has focused attention on internet threats of terrorism.

"I think we need a trusted environment. Things are too insecure," said David Farber, a telecommunications law professor at the University of Pennsylvania and one of four advisers to the Trusted Platform Computing Alliance (TPCA), a hardware-based security initiative. "They were insecure before 9/11, and they are needed more now."

Trusted computing: How it works: http://www.silicon.com/a56314