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Interesting news
May. 7th, 2007 08:30 amI ran across some news stories today I had to comment on, despite not having posted in about four months.
Somebody wrote a virus that commandeers the Windows Activation copy-protection mechanism, and locks the user out of the computer (you can't run any software -- including virus scanners) until they "reactivate." Only instead of the normal activation dialog, it displays one asking for your credit card number to send to the hackers. Essentially, it takes your computer hostage. It's not terribly hard to get rid of if you know what you're doing (you have to bring up an alternate OS, say by using a bootable CD, and clean it from there), but for normal end users it's insurmountable.
What I find interesting about this is that in Windows Vista this could be so much worse. Vista has strong support for HDCP, High Definition Content Protection, a DRM system for preventing Vista computers from being used to pirate high-definition music and video. This support puts HDCP content in an elevated context, where even the system administrator (or, say, his virus-scanning software) can't touch it -- thus, virus writers can get system-high context & encryption to protect themselves with. It's like a rootkit-making toolkit built into the system. Luckily, to carry out this attack, you would need to have an HDCP signing authority key, which currently only the AACS has. On the not-so-bright side, recall that 512-bit number people were passing around last week that brought down Digg? (If you don't, just take my word for it that it was the big thing in nerd news.) That was an HDCP secret vector, which cracks every HD DVD and Blu-Ray disc produced so far (it won't work on future ones, though.) There is a known attack on the signing authority key which requires 40 of these vectors. One down, 39 to go, and then the wheels come off of DRM and all hell breaks loose.
In other news, giving kids laptops doesn't help their education. You know, I could have told you that without even having to spend $7 million on it. Computers are useful at the college level, but in elementary through high school what people really need to learn is how to do things themselves. Automation tools are great once you know the manual process, but if you don't, you create a lot of "black boxes" and people are unable to deal with any ambiguity in the process.
Of course, I think kids spend a ridiculously long time learning to do these basic things themselves, and there's no excuse for how little most people learn in twelve years of government schooling -- there's a phenomenal waste there. But solving the problems of the educational system is a lot harder than throwing money at the problem -- giving people computers ("After seven years, there was literally no evidence it had any impact on student achievement -- none.") is expensive but easy, as it has no losers (except taxpayers, but they don't count when you're the government.) The fact that they mainly use them to surf for porn and play video games can be a "surprising" discovery after the fact, while in the meantime politicians are "doing something" about "modernizing" education. Real change would involve introducing choice into the system -- the ability to choose schools (so that poor schools would fail and die) and the ability to choose education more broadly as well (not having the same mandatory curriculum for everyone, but rather having people learn what they believe they will need to know.) However, letting people choose things means some people will make bad choices and suffer for it, and this is politically intolerable right now.
Somebody wrote a virus that commandeers the Windows Activation copy-protection mechanism, and locks the user out of the computer (you can't run any software -- including virus scanners) until they "reactivate." Only instead of the normal activation dialog, it displays one asking for your credit card number to send to the hackers. Essentially, it takes your computer hostage. It's not terribly hard to get rid of if you know what you're doing (you have to bring up an alternate OS, say by using a bootable CD, and clean it from there), but for normal end users it's insurmountable.
What I find interesting about this is that in Windows Vista this could be so much worse. Vista has strong support for HDCP, High Definition Content Protection, a DRM system for preventing Vista computers from being used to pirate high-definition music and video. This support puts HDCP content in an elevated context, where even the system administrator (or, say, his virus-scanning software) can't touch it -- thus, virus writers can get system-high context & encryption to protect themselves with. It's like a rootkit-making toolkit built into the system. Luckily, to carry out this attack, you would need to have an HDCP signing authority key, which currently only the AACS has. On the not-so-bright side, recall that 512-bit number people were passing around last week that brought down Digg? (If you don't, just take my word for it that it was the big thing in nerd news.) That was an HDCP secret vector, which cracks every HD DVD and Blu-Ray disc produced so far (it won't work on future ones, though.) There is a known attack on the signing authority key which requires 40 of these vectors. One down, 39 to go, and then the wheels come off of DRM and all hell breaks loose.
In other news, giving kids laptops doesn't help their education. You know, I could have told you that without even having to spend $7 million on it. Computers are useful at the college level, but in elementary through high school what people really need to learn is how to do things themselves. Automation tools are great once you know the manual process, but if you don't, you create a lot of "black boxes" and people are unable to deal with any ambiguity in the process.
Of course, I think kids spend a ridiculously long time learning to do these basic things themselves, and there's no excuse for how little most people learn in twelve years of government schooling -- there's a phenomenal waste there. But solving the problems of the educational system is a lot harder than throwing money at the problem -- giving people computers ("After seven years, there was literally no evidence it had any impact on student achievement -- none.") is expensive but easy, as it has no losers (except taxpayers, but they don't count when you're the government.) The fact that they mainly use them to surf for porn and play video games can be a "surprising" discovery after the fact, while in the meantime politicians are "doing something" about "modernizing" education. Real change would involve introducing choice into the system -- the ability to choose schools (so that poor schools would fail and die) and the ability to choose education more broadly as well (not having the same mandatory curriculum for everyone, but rather having people learn what they believe they will need to know.) However, letting people choose things means some people will make bad choices and suffer for it, and this is politically intolerable right now.
