the return of key escrow?

According to the BBC, the British government is talking to
Microsoft 
about putting in a back door for the file encryption
mechanisms.

ht
tp://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4713018.stm



		--Steven M. Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbi
a.edu/~smb



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"Steven M. Bellovin" <smbcs.columbia.edu> writes:

>According to the BBC, the British government is talking
to Microsoft about
>putting in a back door for the file encryption
mechanisms.

That's one way of looking at it.  It's not really a
backdoor, it's a way of
spiking DRM.  If the UK government can be scared into
requiring that Windows
Vista not be fully DRM-enabled (by whatever means
necessary), then that's a
good thing.  Waving the four horsemen at them is a good way
of achieving this
- the horsemen have been used for years to justify
restrictive computer laws,
now (for once) they're being used to try and combat
restrictions.  So we
hould be supporting this, not condemning it.  Maybe someone
with a
congresscritters ear in the US could get the same thing
adopted over there.
The horsemen are bigger than Hollywood.

Peter.

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Chris Olesch wrote:
> Ok the lurker posts...
> 
> Can someone explain to me why security specialists
think this:
> 
> "The system uses BitLocker Drive Encryption
through a chip called TPM
> (Trusted Platform Module) in the computer's
motherboard."
> 
> is going to stop authorities from retreiving data?
> 
> I ask this question on the basis of their encrypted
hard drive on the
> old xbox. It supposedly used a secure key so the hard
drive couldn't be
> upgraded, yet this fact didn't slow down the modd
scene. Its not as if
> they are hardware encrypting tightly is it?
The old XBox didn't encrypt the data on the hard drive -
instead, it used a
password on the drive firmware that almost all modern hard
drives support (your
home pc's drive almost certainly supports the same thing,
even if your bios doesn't)
Defeating the password requires one of:
a) obtaining the password
b) replacing the drive bios or controller
c) using an already unlocked drive
d) defeating the os on a running system to allow writes to
the drive

all known xbox hacks used method c) or d) - using a game to
bypass the write
protection, or disconnecting the ide cable after the drive
was unlocked and
using a standard usb>>ide adaptor to write to the
drive.

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On Thu, Feb 16, 2006 at 06:54:21PM +1300, Peter Gutmann
wrote:
> "Steven M. Bellovin" <smbcs.columbia.edu> writes:
> 
> >According to the BBC, the British government is
talking to Microsoft about
> >putting in a back door for the file encryption
mechanisms.
> 
> That's one way of looking at it.  It's not really a
backdoor, it's a way of
> spiking DRM.

This is exactly it. For years Western governments have been
worried that
terrorists might build a secure distribution network for
information and
orders, and now Hollywood is building one. A fake record
label would be
a fantastic front for such a thing; each subscriber device
(such as a PC
or mobile phone) can be uniquely identified, so when your
agent
downloads the latest hit single he actually gets four
minutes of orders
etc; nobody can tell from the outside, it's
wiretap-resistant, the agent
can't have the key beaten out of him because he doesn't
know it,
it's difficult and time-consuming to extract it from the
device, and
because everyone has one it's quite hard to use traffic
analysis alone
to pick out suspects.

There is no way Microsoft is going to build in a back door
to Vista for
Special Branch - once they do that for one government and it
becomes
known all hell breaks loose and they get banned from half
their markets.
Some form of crazy overcomplicated key escrow system might
happen; might
as well tie people's TCPA keys to their biometric identity
cards, right?

Pete
-- 
Peter Clay                                   | Campaign for 
 _  _| .__
                                             | Digital      
/  / | |
                                             | Rights!      
\_ \_| |
                                             | http://www.ukcdr.org

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