[KLUG Members] DRM in every Samsung machine

[Jamie McCarthy]

bruce@armintl.com (Bruce Smith) writes:

> > The rationale for this will be:  what good is it to have a
> > laptop that will only boot Windows from the hard drive, if
> > the thief can just put in a Knoppix CD and mount your Windows
> > drive on Linux?
> 
> That's not much of a rationale, since the hard drive can be
> installed and mounted on a different computer, and read by
> Linux anyway.

You and I know that, but any tiny security improvement can be turned
into a major achievement by the application of marketing dollars.
And, yes, though physical control ultimately equals software control,
forcing the thief to remove the HD to steal data is a tiny security
improvement.

(This is why I think the BIOS is not the ultimate pinch point for
DRM;  it has to be all the way down at the CPU, nestled in the same
silicon that does the addition and subtraction.  Heck, in theory
someone with a laser could chop out the DRM at the transistor level
right?  But once you get inside the CPU, practically speaking, the
truth of "physical control means software control" isn't so true
anymore.)

> The real answer to securing hard drives on laptops is a BIOS that
> encrypts the hard drive on the fly, so nothing can read it without
> decrypting it.  Don't some laptops have this option already?

I know IBM has been working in that direction;  I don't know if they
did it in the BIOS or not.

If that is a desired feature, then it will also be advantageous for
the BIOS to prevent booting of non-DRM-secured operating systems.
After all, I can make up a Knoppix spinoff distro, a trojan horse
whose purpose is to LOOK like Windows booting up, to the point where
you key in your password to decrypt the hard drive, at which point
my software squirrels away your password and reboots into the real
Windows.  All I have to do is quietly stick a CD in your drive!
The only way to prevent password theft will be to have a BIOS that
refuses to boot the evil "hacker operating systems" like Linux...

...right?

> > "Mark my words" :(
> 
> So what can lowly people like us do to prevent this from happening?
> Or are we doomed to set back and watch M$ slowly kill Linux?

Some actions that will have an effect are to vote with our wallets
(don't support the companies that are eager to rush to the new
regime) and to speak out whenever -- as they soon will be --
machines that don't do DRM are characterized as "pirate" computers,
"hacker" computers, "virus-spreader" computers, etc.
-- 
  Jamie McCarthy
 http://mccarthy.vg/
  jamie@mccarthy.vg