American tech alliance's security plan attacked

[InfoSec News <isn () c4i org>]

http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/3505238.htm

By John Markoff
New York Times
Wed, June 19, 2002

A leading European computer security and privacy advocate is 
challenging an effort by the American computer industry to create a 
standard to protect software and digital content, calling the plan a 
smoke screen by established companies to protect their existing 
markets.

In a paper to be presented today at a technical conference in 
Toulouse, France, today, Ross Anderson, a University of Cambridge 
computer scientist, attacks the Trusted Computing Platform Alliance, 
an organization formed in October 1999 by Compaq Computer, 
Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel and Microsoft. The companies say their 
intent is to provide a cryptographic system that would insure privacy 
and protect intellectual property.

The technology that the alliance has developed uses an encryption 
scheme intended to positively identify computer hardware and operating 
system software and determine that their configuration has not been 
altered. The companies say it will help detect virus invasions and 
provide security for commercial transactions such as online purchases 
and banking.

But Anderson argues that the potential exists for the technology to be 
used in a more sinister fashion: to create a new form of censorship 
based on the ability to track and identify electronic information.

He compares the technology to a proposal by Intel in January 1999 to 
insert a distinct serial number into each of its Pentium processors, 
an effort that drew widespread consumer opposition after privacy 
advocates warned that the technology could be used for surveillance 
purposes. The plan was quickly withdrawn.

Anderson also warns that widespread adoption of the standard from the 
alliance, known as TCPA, could put large U.S. computer companies in a 
position to thwart competition by controlling who gets to use the 
standard and on what computer platforms.

``The TCPA appears likely to change the ecology of information goods 
and services markets so as to favor incumbents, penalize challengers 
and slow down the pace of innovation and entrepreneurship,'' he wrote.

A Microsoft spokesman said the company had not been able to review the 
paper and would not comment.

Anderson is a Cambridge computer scientist who is also chairman of the 
Foundation for Information Policy Research, a British Internet policy 
research group.



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