What is a secure computer?

Ryan Carboni ryacko at gmail.com
Sat Sep 9 22:53:50 PDT 2017


What does it say that there are potentially hundreds of undocumented
instructions on your processor?
What does it say that many common attacks are a result of too much emphasis
on performance or a result of laziness? Some wifi routers crash if their
session table is exhausted. The Mirai botnet wouldn't have happened if a
good common library was used. What good is a computer if you can't allow it
to be accessed by untrustworthy people without null result?

Invisible Things Labs had put out two papers on how x86 and state is both
harmful. Nevermind that the original computers used relays, switches, and
wires to be programmed. Basically anything more complex than a clock is a
computer, although those were called sequencers by NASA. Maybe we should
return to literal fuses for microprocessors (or just substitute NOT gates
on one layer of the processor).

We are moving into a future with cameras, microphones, and manually set
clocks in everything.
No idea why everything needs a clock that you have to set after the power
goes out.
If anyone thinks consumer choice is a thing, point out the clocks.
No idea why TAILS automatically sets the clock.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/08/29/intel_management_
engine_can_be_disabled/

I have paid for a security feature that the government demanded and I
cannot use? On the other hand, a disproportionate amount of die area was
allocated towards AES-NI right after side channel attacks were discovered.


In the end, you can only trust something you can understand, otherwise you
are trusting the word of someone else.


What is a good future to work towards? Corporate call centers using thin
clients with two VMs; one VM allowed access to the intranet, and the other
only to the DMZ and the internet? Binney-grade privacy protections of
consumer data?


It doesn't matter.


Privacy is gone. Although for past decades, private detectives were always
able to get others to look up information for them, Pellicano is a great
example. The set of information available to the powerful has always been
different to those of the plebians. It just simply got worse. But if you
just use this Tor exit node run by Romanian organized crime... you will be
much more secure.


But I have good news everybody:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11407536
>1: I asked someone involved with WebRTC. They suggested "maybe a page
wants to communicate with your fridge directly" as a serious use of WebRTC
data channels.

http://www.webcitation.org/6FnFZK9LU?url=http://larry.masinter.net/

RFC 2324 "Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol (HTCPCP/1.0)." L.
Masinter. April 1, 1998. This has a serious purpose -- it identifies many
of the ways in which HTTP has been extended inappropriately.


??? are you all victims of fetal alcohol syndrome ???
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