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The Dangers of Microsoft Pluton

(gabrielsieben.tech)
733 points gjsman-1000 | 2 comments | 26 Jul 22 03:46 UTC | HN request time: 0.419s | source
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Gh0stRAT ◴[26 Jul 22 06:26 UTC] No.32235028[source]▶
I'm completely missing how his example of a Word document that can only be opened by approved users on approved hardware within the corporation is supposed to be a bad thing.

Honestly, that sounds pretty fantastic. I've been using 3rd party tools/extensions to do this sort of thing in corporate and government environments for years, but having the attestation go all the way down to the hardware level is a big value-add, especially with so much ransomware/spyware/extortion/espionage going on these days.

Can someone please explain to me how the author might see this level of security as a bad thing?

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1. somehnacct3757 ◴[26 Jul 22 11:28 UTC] No.32236864[source]▶
Author has a bias against Microsoft. So do hacker news readers.

News of Pluton and its security goals have been readily available since 2020 from reputable hardware sites like Anandtech, or directly from Microsoft themselves. There's nothing new or hidden or surprising about it unless you live to dream up Microsoft conspiracy theories.

Many other hardware manufacturers have similar security offerings including Intel and Apple. Microsoft is arguably late to the game here, given their only recent interest in PC hardware. OS integration isn't even new. Macs have been shipping with T1 and T2 chips for over five years. Has the sky fallen on that ecosystem?

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2. dx034 ◴[26 Jul 22 11:35 UTC] No.32236899[source]▶
And that's why Microsoft needs to include such a chip. If we move to a world where security is enforced more and more by hardware, you'll need a device that can participate.