New subject: Ross's TCPA paper

6 Jul 2002

      Seth Schoen writes:
...
The Palladium security model and features are different from Unix, but
you can imagine by rough analogy a Unix implementation on a system
with protected memory.  Every process can have its own virtual memory
space, read and write files, interact with the user, etc.  But
normally a program can't read another program's memory without the
other program's permission.
The analogy starts to break down, though: in Unix a process running as
the superuser or code running in kernel mode may be able to ignore
memory protection and monitor or control an arbitrary process.  In
Palladium, if a system is started in a trusted mode, not even the OS
kernel will have access to all system resources.
Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that a "trusted" OS will not peek
at system resources that it is not supposed to?  After all, since the
OS loads the application, it has full power to molest that application
in any way.  Any embedded keys or certs in the app could be changed by
the OS.  There is no way for an application to protect itself against
the OS.

And there is no need; a trusted OS by definition does not interfere with
the application's use of confidential data.  It does not allow other
applications to get access to that data.  And it provides no back doors
for "root" or the system owner or device drivers to get access to the
application data, either.

At http://vitanuova.loyalty.org/2002-07-03.html you provide more
information about your meeting with Microsoft.  It's an interesting
writeup, but the part about the system somehow protecting the app from the
OS can't be right.  Apps don't have that kind of structural integrity.
A chip in the system cannot protect them from an OS virtualizing that
chip.  What the chip does do is to let *remote* applications verify that
the OS is running in trusted mode.  But local apps can never achieve
that degree of certainty, they are at the mercy of the OS which can
twiddle their bits at will and make them "believe" anything it wants.
Of course a "trusted" OS would never behave in such an uncouth manner.
...
That limitation
doesn't stop you from writing your own application software or scripts.
Absolutely.  The fantasies which have been floating here of filters
preventing people from typing virus-triggering command lines are utterly
absurd.  What are people trying to prove by raising such nonsensical
propositions?  Palladium needs no such capability.
...
Interestingly, Palladium and TCPA both allow you to modify any part of
the software installed on your system (though not your hardware).  The
worst thing which can happen to you as a result is that the system
will know that it is no longer "trusted", or will otherwise be able to
recognize or take account of the changes you made.  In principle,
there's nothing wrong with running "untrusted"; particular applications
or services which relied on a trusted feature, including sealed
storage (see below), may fail to operate.
Right, and you can boot untrusted OS's as well.  Recently there was
discussion here of HP making a trusted form of Linux that would work with
the TCPA hardware.  So you will have options in both the closed source and
open source worlds to boot trusted OS's, or you can boot untrusted ones,
like old versions of Windows.  The user will have more choice, not less.
...
Palladium and TCPA both allow an application to make use of
hardware-based encryption and decryption in a scheme called "sealed
storage" which uses a hash of the running system's software as part of
the key.  One result of this is that, if you change relevant parts of
the software, the hardware will no longer be able to perform the
decryption step.  To oversimplify slightly, you could imagine that the
hardware uses the currently-running OS kernel's hash as part of this
key.  Then, if you change the kernel in any way (which you're
permitted to do), applications running under it will find that they're
no longer able to decrypt "sealed" files which were created under the
original kernel.  Rebooting with the original kernel will restore the
ability to decrypt, because the hash will again match the original
kernel's hash.
Yes, your web page goes into somewhat more detail about how this would
work.  This way a program can run under a secure OS and store sensitive
data on the disk, such that booting into another OS will then make it
impossible to decrypt that data.

Some concerns have been raised here about upgrades.  Did Microsoft
discuss how that was planned to work, migrating from one version of a
secure OS to another?  Presumably they have different hashes, but it
is necessary for the new one to be able to unseal data sealed by the
old one.

One obvious solution would be for the new OS to present a cert to the chip
which basically said that its OS hash should be treated as an "alias"
of the older OS's hash.  So the chip would unseal using the old OS hash
even when the new OS was running, based on the fact that this cert was
signed by the TCPA trusted root key.

This seems to put more power than we would like into a single trusted
key, though.  It would be interesting to hear what Microsoft has in mind
along these lines.
...
(I've been reading TCPA specs and recently met with some Microsoft
Palladium team members.  But I'm still learning about both systems and
may well have made some mistakes in my description.)
If you've read the TCPA specs you're way ahead of most of the commentators
here.  You have undoubtedly noted how little connection there is between
the flights of fancy and speculation which have appeared recently and
the actual functionality of the TCPA system.

Re: Ross's TCPA paper

AARG! Anonymous

jamesd＠echeque.com

Jay Sulzberger

John S. Denker

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