L12-TCPA-PALLADIUM Datasheet, PDF (12/12 Pages) List of Unclassifed Manufacturers – TCPA and Palladium

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9 QUESTIONS & ANSWERS
A: Yes, because at the end of the day decryption always happens and you have a choice how to
store it. Think of it as a big red override button. There’s nothing that prevents that at the
hardware level. - Brian LaMacchia
Side note: There are certainly customers of ours that don’t care about certified stuff – they
want their own keys in there. Certain 3 lettered agencies want an override. Who ends up
owning the machine? - Brian LaMacchia
Q: Is this effort truly aimed as benefit to users, or is it more for copyright protection, DRM, and
Hollywood?
A: There are two main concerns driving Palladium:
1. Piracy
2. That the PC might be bypassed as medium for digital document distribution
Furthermore, this is also aimed at enterprises. Enterprises are concerned about keeping docu-
ments private.
Q: In terms of needing to build a market for certificate authorities of pseudo-identities, who are
your competitors?
A: Retailers like Blockbuster who may want to do (and care only about) their own authentication.
Q: What will be the first things to move to the trusted side?
A: • anything in OS that works with secrets
• core crypto
• lightweight viewers
• further down the road: full LHS apps (browser, OE, Word, etc.) move to RHS
Q: What happens if your SSC dies?
A: You’d have to have had a migration scenario upfront (need to have backed up software key).
Otherwise, you lose your data. But, the same is true with the non-Palladium technology.
Q: I, as a user, don’t know what’s running on the right hand side. How do I protect my left hand
side stuff from the right hand side stuff? - Ron Rivest
A: Policy for rights of agents is more impoverished in terms of resources. Furthermore, the
nexus/OS are the gatekeepers. Agents will first get very restricted rights and build up from
there.
Q: With firewalls, people were duped into thinking the firewall solved all their security problems.
“Who needs end-to-end security when you have a firewall?” was the attitude. How will you
prevent the same attitude from developing if there is wide-spread use of Palladium? People
will still have to worry about buffer overflows, etc. -Kevin Fu
A: Train the marketeers. That’s why there’s a difference between the white paper and the technical
paper. Unfortunately, the security business involves a lot of hype.
Q: Regarding small devices. What’s your vision for the future (will they also run Palladium?) -
Ron Rivest
A: Currently, small devices are closed and thus do not need Palladium. If devices become more
open, that may be a possibility. But, devices can also become more closed.