OT: Intel in hot water again, interesting reading!
FYI
>
> <http://img.cmpnet.com/tw/newsletters/scoop-top.gif> The Scoop
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>By Fred Langa
>By Fred Langa
>
>InformationWeek
>
>You probably saw the original coverage of Intel's announcement that it would
>embed an individual serial number in each Pentium III and Celeron chip. The
>96-bit ID can identify the user's PC to any software that knows how to ask.
>
>Immediately after the announcement, various consumer watchdog groups went
>ballistic. Epic, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, launched a
>boycott of Intel, calling it the "Big Brother Inside" campaign. Epic says
>the processor serial number, "would likely be collected by many sites,
>indexed and accumulated in databases...The records of many different
>companies could be joined without the user's knowledge or consent to provide
>an intrusive profile of activity on the computer."
>
>Intel immediately backed off a bit by announcing that although the serial
>number would ship enabled on every chip, Intel would provide equipment
>manufacturers with a small software applet that could be used to prevent
>access to the number. However, the software must work (it hasn't been tested
>yet); it must be properly installed on each PC; and it must be run after
>every reboot.
>
>Epic says that because this approach "relies on a software patch that must
>run each and every time that a user turns on the computer, it is susceptible
>to tampering by other software programs." So, Epic's boycott is still in
>place: The group insists that Intel should disable the processor serial
>number at the hardware level, where it will stay disabled until the PC owner
>turns it on.
>
>To further muddy the waters, the processor serial number may not be very
>secure. CMP Media's Electronic Engineering Times quoted cryptography expert
>Bruce Schneier, who talked about the prospect that the serial numbers can be
>forged or stolen: "A system is only as secure as the smartest hacker," he
>said. "All it takes is for one person to defeat the tamper resistance.
>There's always someone who manages to unravel the protection. There isn't a
>copy-protected piece of software that hasn't been stripped of its
>protections and posted to hacker bulletin boards. This won't be any
>different." (For the full story, go to "Intel ID Protection Scheme Called
>Insufficient.")
>
>Of course, there are legitimate and useful purposes for this kind of ID,
>especially for resource-tracking within an enterprise. Indeed, some
>workstation manufacturers already include similar functions on their
>enterprise-ready boxes, and some enterprise software products use these
>serial numbers for licensing. But Intel is attempting to broaden this
>practice to an unprecedented degree by putting the ID number on every chip
>and enabling it by default. Toss in only weak assurances of the serial
>number's security and only a weak turn-off option, and you're got a
>firestorm of protests.
>
>Last week, I conducted an informal online poll among the readers of Windows
>Magazine. The reaction was eye-opening: Out of hundreds of posts, virtually
>all were vehemently anti-Intel. And in that huge majority, most people swore
>their next PC purchase would be AMD-based, until and unless Intel either
>removes the processor serial number or allows it to be disabled in hardware.
>One reader suggested the clever idea of resurrecting the old "turbo" switch
>approach and placing a simple serial number enable/disable button on the
>front of every PC. (You can read more on the controversy and see reader
>reaction at Windows Magazine: Big Brother Inside?.)
>
>I was amazed at the absolute intensity of the reader posts. It's as though
>the processor serial number was the last straw for many people: Intel's
>history of high prices and other public relations fumbles (like the
>floating-point math bug) seem to have built up a huge reservoir of
>resentment that's now spilling over. I think we're seeing the start of a
>strong anti-Intel backlash, analogous to the anti-Microsoft fervor that's
>changing the operating system landscape.
>
>Fred Langa is a senior consulting editor and columnist for Windows Magazine.
>Fred's free weekly newsletter is available via subscribe_at_langa.com
><mailto:subscribe_at_langa.com> . You can contact him at fred_at_langa.com
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><http://www.langa.com> . http://www.techweb.com/ <http://www.techweb.com/>
>
Received on Thu Feb 11 1999 - 23:48:47 GMT
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