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The Dangers of Microsoft Pluton

(gabrielsieben.tech)
733 points gjsman-1000 | 5 comments | 26 Jul 22 03:46 UTC | HN request time: 1.543s | source
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userbinator ◴[26 Jul 22 05:05 UTC] No.32234457[source]▶
What is to prevent school WiFi from one day requiring a Pluton assertion that your Windows PC hasn’t been tampered with before you can join the network?

Remote attestation is the true enemy of your freedom. The power of the authoritarian corporatocracy to force you to use only the (entire) systems they control. It's worth reading https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html again just to see how prescient Stallman was.

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1. freemint ◴[26 Jul 22 10:16 UTC] No.32236408[source]▶
> Remote attestation is the true enemy of your freedom.

Technology is a tool. What is true however is that under the current way how the economy is structured remote attestation weakens freedoms of individuals mostly.

If Facebook was under remote attestation that private information was only used in limited and specific ways and even the NSA can not get to them without breaking the remote attestation, that would be a good thing. If firmware was under remote attestation we would have to worry a lot less about backdoors and the Diesel scandal would have never happened.

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2. leksak ◴[26 Jul 22 10:42 UTC] No.32236536[source]▶
But it'd make a lot of whistleblowing impossible too
3. kasabali ◴[26 Jul 22 13:00 UTC] No.32237655[source]▶
> If firmware was under remote attestation ... the Diesel scandal would have never happened.

Remote attestation would prevent a firmware written by first party and passed certification processes WHAT?

4. userbinator ◴[26 Jul 22 13:23 UTC] No.32237918[source]▶
It is a tool, just like nuclear weapons are a weapon.

I'm definitely not on the "ban all crypto" side, but I see why the governments are in support of that, and for the longest time, strong crypto was (and still is?) classified as a munition; it's very powerful.

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5. raxxorraxor ◴[26 Jul 22 15:06 UTC] No.32239362[source]▶
Well, I think governments are mostly concerned with people having secrets. Who would need secrets who isn't a terrorist? That it was classified as munition is probably more due to old war hawks and how they saw encryption employed.