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Computer World: Microsoft becoming 'software police,' say users.

  • 10-08-2007 11:46am
    #1
    Oracle
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,630 ✭✭✭


    Although Vista's official release was less than 6 months ago Microsoft's already acting as 'software police' using it's new technology: http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9029161

    Regardless of what you want, it's what Microsoft wants that decides whether software is allowed to be installed on your machine, or not. Microsoft got VeriSign to revoke the digital signing of a specific piece of software and marked it for removal with a detection and removal signature using Windows Defender. So the predicted behaviour of Vista being used against the user, in ways other than DRM, has already become a reality. What software will be next?

    Futhermore Microsoft's security team are considering adding the revoked key to the kernel mode code signing revocation list. This means that any software signed with this key will be prevented from loading, regardless of the wishes of users.

    The software in question is a free utility called Atsiv to allow the use of unsigned drivers for legacy hardware to work with Vista. The developers are Linchpin Labs, they've issued a response to Microsoft's actions.


Comments

  • #2
    Martyr
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,567 ✭✭✭Martyr


    DRM is never going to work - not unless the powers that be turn every country into a police state, and make it an executable offence to circumvent it on any computer.

    Alex Ionescu discussed something on his blog called "Purple Pill" some days ago which allowed anyone to load a driver on Vista, signed or not..it was soon removed.


  • #3
    mathias
    Closed Accounts Posts: 2,174 ✭✭✭mathias


    In all fairness , thats not a totally unreasonable stance for Microsoft to take in this case , having read the article.

    The Astiv software was deliberately bypassing a security feature to achieve its objective , which in this case , although innocent , could be exploited at some time in the future for less honourable objectives.
    It does indeed sound like rootkit behaviour and I for one wouldnt like it on my system.

    Microsoft have plenty of dubious activities to moan about without hyping every action of theirs up as a DRM issue.


  • #4
    Martyr
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,567 ✭✭✭Martyr


    i don't think its unreasonable either, but Vistas protection mechanism is pretty futile given how incredibly easy it is to acquire a cert from a root authority - as the authors of Atsiv have shown.

    Are microsoft going to try revoke every cert they find to violate the kernels protection? what about those it doesn't know about?


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