Re: Back door design

[Anton Tagunov]

Anton>  1. Administration

Anton>  OS runs in one of two modes - opaque (default) and debug.
Anton>  Debug mode  == there is at least one application designated as 
"Debugger".

Anton> OS Admin GUI has a section used to
Anton> * designate any application as "Debugger"
Anton> * designate any application as exempt from debugging (irreversible)
Anton> * disable debugging completely (irreversible)

Marcus> To put this into the context of "trusted computing", let me repeat a
Marcus> remark I just made in another reply.  The ability to "debug" (or
Marcus> cheat) transparently for remote attestation was also made here:

Marcus> Trusted Computing: Promise and Risk By Seth Schoen
Marcus> http://www.eff.org/Infrastructure/trusted_computing/20031001_tc.php

Marcus> You may want to compare your proposal with "Owner Override" as
Marcus> described there.  The ability to mark some processes as exempt is an
Marcus> interesting addition.

Hello Marcus,

have read with interest the last sections of
http://www.eff.org/Infrastructure/trusted_computing/20031001_tc.php

Seth Schoen is a nice guy.
He says it'd be nice if TPM chips were less evil.

Agreed. But I was thinking in a differently.
What can be done at the face of current TPM chips?
Can we protect at least against DRM?

My naive plan is
- build an OS that had "back-door" (owner inspection, debug) facility built in
- make it so popular vendors are forced to let their software data be used on it

This would be the death of DRM as DRM wouldn't survive under inspection.

cheers,
Anton