Challenge to David Wagner on TCPA

[AARG! Anonymous]

James Donald wrote:
> On 29 Jul 2002 at 15:35, AARG! Anonymous wrote:
> > both Palladium and TCPA deny that they are designed to restrict 
> > what applications you run.  The TPM FAQ at 
> > http://www.trustedcomputing.org/docs/TPM_QA_071802.pdf reads
>
> They deny that intent, but physically they have that capability. 

Maybe, but the point is whether the architectural spec includes that
capability.  After all, any OS could restrict what applications you
run; you don't need special hardware for that.  The question is whether
restrictions on software are part of the design spec.  You should be
able to point to something in the TCPA spec that would restrict or limit
software, if that is the case.

Or do you think that when David Wagner said, "Both Palladium and TCPA
incorporate features that would restrict what applications you could run,"
he meant "that *could* restrict what applications you run"?  They *could*
impose restrictions, just like any OS could impose restrictions.

But to say that they *would* impose restrictions is a stronger
statement, don't you think?  If you claim that an architecture would
impose restrictions, shouldn't you be able to point to somewhere in the
design document where it explains how this would occur?

There's enormous amount of information in the TCPA spec about how to
measure the code which is going to be run, and to report those measurement
results so third parties can know what code is running.  But there's not
one word about preventing software from running based on the measurements.