Cyber Security Institute

Monday, April 25, 2005

Microsoft reveals hardware security plans

The next version of Windows, codenamed “Longhorn,” will have security features to take advantage of the trusted computing hardware now showing up in the marketplace, Microsoft executives announced recently.

The software giant plans to deliver encryption features and integrity checks to insure that computers, such as notebooks, that are disconnected from a network are not affected by malicious programs.

Called Secure Startup, the feature will appear in Microsoft’s forthcoming version of its operating system, known as Longhorn, and represents a much smaller subset of the security features that the software giant had originally intended to build into the system software.

“We remain fully committed to the vision of creating new security technology for the Microsoft Windows platform that uses a unique hardware and software design to give users new kinds of security and privacy protections in an interconnected world,” Selena Wilson, director of product marketing for Microsoft’s Security Business and Technology Unit, said in statement.

While the technologies, once known as Palladium and now called the next-generation secure computing base (NGSCB), will help companies and consumers lock down their computers and networks, concerns remain that the hardware security measures could also be used to lock-in consumers to a single platform and restrict fair uses of content.  Innovation could suffer if reverse engineers are locked out from tinkering with devices, said Dan Lockton, a graduate student at the University of Cambridge whose thesis focuses on the effects of technologies created for controlling information.  The fear is that “we’re moving to a stage where the customer no longer has control over the product he or she has bought or the products (created) using that device,” Lockton said.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/04/26/microsoft_hardware_security_plans/