I seem to remember last time someone tried something like this (Trusted Platform Module) a researcher burned the top off the chip and read the private key with a Focused Ion Beam workstation: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qk73ye2_g4o" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qk73ye2_g4o</a> (WARNING: extreme hacking ahead!)<p>You would've thought people would have worked this one out by now.<p>Who fancies running a HN pool on how long until the root keys are public? (I'm serious - how funny would that be. We just need someone with enough trust from the community to handle the money. And someone who lives where online gambling is not regulated...)
I would hope this constitute anticompetitive behavior. If only intel can decrypt movies and studios only make them available for intel procs, this can seriously hurt all other chipmakers.
Could someone here please explain the likely mechanics of how this DRM will work? I must presume that decrypted content would not be available to the OS and would ostensibly only be exported from the GPU via some video output (HDMI w/ HDCP, etc.)?<p>Presuming this is the case, how would key management happen? Would every chip have its own unique keypair? If not, an attack similar to the one linked to here by JohhnieCache would render this scheme useless. If each keypair is unique, how would a particular content provider know that a public key was actually one paired with a private key only contained in Intel's silicon? Would Intel provide a registry of all valid public keys to content providers? If there is no such central registry, would the public keys themselves be signed by Intel so that content providers could be certain of their origin?<p>Please correct any wrong assumptions on my part. I know little of cryptography compared to many here, but I am frustrated by how little technical commentary has accompanied the articles I have read about this new processor family.
As one of the comments suggests, this seems doomed to failure. Paying for a streaming version of a movie doesn't seem very desirable, as it's inherently non-portable. There's a good chance I want to watch somewhere I don't have real[0] broadband. If it's too difficult to do that, I can always find a torrent. This situation does not seem likely to change.<p>[0] Mobile "broadband" doesn't count. In most places, it is entirely unsuitable for streaming high-def video and will be for several years.
I gotta wonder about this and their relationship with Apple. Apple can't really use it because they also have a large ARM presence and Intel isn't going to give it to ARM. Heck, Microsoft is in the same boat. Who exactly is going to be able to use this? set-top boxes?
It seems to me that this will actually become a <i>desireable</i> feature, if only because the masses are ignorant of DRM. I wonder if other chip makers will be forced to "offer" DRM in order to compete.
And so the closed web begins! I am sure these new chips will have magical "flaws" in them that prevent regular content from being shown for unforeseen reasons, and they will also prevent copying DVDs and using certain share apps. It was only a matter of time. Prepare to have to pay every time you want to watch content, instead of being able to buy individual copies of DVDs, prepared to get milked for your dollars every time you log on!<p>The DIVX revolution has been killed.
Would this make it politically OK for Netflix to release a Linux streaming client? I read somewhere that the lack of a standard DRM lib was the blocking issue on an Android client.