"Palladium" and TCPA

[Richard Clayton]

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In article <014001c21ce5$64f40f40$060a0a0a@studio>, Telepathic
Industries <studio@telepathic.com> writes

>David Farber, the Federal Communications Commission's former chief technologist, 
>said he was "somewhat satisfied" with Microsoft's plans, but he will watch 
>closely to ensure the company doesn't try to use Palladium to control the 
>world's software markets. 
>
>"One has to keep their feet to the fire on how they use it," said Farber, who 
>testified against Microsoft during its antitrust trial. "Right now, I don't see 
>any signs there's any devious plot." 

TCPA was first described in a paper by William A. Arbaugh, David J.
Farber and Jonathan M. Smith, ``A Secure and Reliable Bootstrap
Architecture'', in the proceedings of the IEEE Symposium on Security and
Privacy (1997) pp 65-71;

        www.cis.upenn.edu/~waa/96-35/aegis.html

It led to a US patent: ``Secure and Reliable Bootstrap Architecture'',
U.S. Patent No.  6,185,678, February 6th, 2001.

One might like journalists to point out this type of connection when
choosing "authoritative" quotes :(

>Microsoft's efforts are similar to those of the Trusted Computing Platform 
>Alliance, an industry group also working on new hardware technology to let 
>computers distinguish "trustworthy" software. IBM has already shipped new laptop 
>computers featuring such security chips. 

If someone can point out the difference between TCPA and Palladium I'd
be grateful (seems unlikely to me that chip makers will put in two
separate sets of hardware encryption features).

>Microsoft's name for its efforts, Palladium, comes from the statue of Pallas 
>Athena, which was believed to protect the ancient city of Troy from invaders. In 
>modern parlance, a palladium is considered a guarantee of integrity. 

Did Microsoft not keep on reading the story to discover what happened to
Troy's security and integrity ?  [[Diomedes climbed in, nicked the
statue and the Trojans believing the wooden horse to be an offering to
Pallas Athena wheeled it into their city...]]

- -- 
richard                                              Richard Clayton

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.         Benjamin Franklin

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