

Atari Founder Proclaims the End of Gaming Piracy - arvernus
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/encryption-chip-will-end-piracy-open-markets-says-bushnell

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jrockway
There are no details on how this is going to work, and I don't think it will.
The TPM is not a magic crypto-chip that only the game manufacturers know
about. It's designed to help the user protect his own data. Regardless of any
encryption, eventually the CPU will have to execute instructions that aren't
encrypted. (Hint: memory, cache, busses, etc. aren't encrypted. The PC was not
designed to be a secure architecture, and it isn't.)

I assume they are planning on some sort of online distribution. You give the
game publisher your TPM's public key, they encrypt it, and then the game can
only be played when your TPM decrypts the game with its built-in private key.
But there are tons of trivial attacks on this. For example, write a driver
that looks like a TPM, but has a known secret key. One person does this, and
the game is pirated.

All in all, this will fail. The TPM was not designed for this purpose.

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tptacek
This is all decisively untrue. The TPM (or rather, Intel TXT) was specifically
designed for this purpose.

What's tripping you up is that the vocabulary they use to describe it is
rootkits and OS integrity. But it's the same thing for DRM and copy
protection. The idea is a chain of trust that runs from the application code
all the way to the chipset, or, more simply, that the system can assure itself
that it knows what code is running.

If you take away the ability to inject or modify running code, and provide a
secure key store, lots of DRM systems become quite difficult to break. By and
large, they work by keeping sensitive code encrypted except while it's
executing.

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josefresco
Some of the most pirated games in history have also been some of the most
profitable. Consider it a badge of honor that your game is desired by
'pirates'. Pirates talk to less tech savvy people which leads to more game
sales.

I predict a large market in non TPM motherboards.

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tptacek
The TPM doesn't live "on the motherboard"; it lives in the Intel chipset. It's
not something you just elect not to mount on your board.

Even if it was elective --- and again it isn't --- it helps most consumers
more than it hurts. Modders are perhaps 1% of the market. Considerably more
than 1% of the market wants full disk encryption and two-factor auth to their
bank accounts, both things that the TPM offers.

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axod
How ridiculous. It's an arms race. There is no end.

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tptacek
Economies win arms races. The Cold War ended because we outspent the Soviets.
The DRM arms race will work the same way; it's over when one side makes it
prohibitively expensive for the other to keep up.

If you look at the amount of effort it took to break the last X360 iteration,
or the fact that there's still no public break of Apple FairPlay, you can see
where this is going. If it costs $500,000 to break BD+ v1, and Macrovision has
v2, v3, v4, and v5 sitting on the shelf, DRM starts to look a little less
silly.

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albertcardona
You are underestimating the power of an ocean of determined people with
nothing better to do.

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tptacek
I think you're massively overrating the latent pool of reversing and software
protection talent, and I backed my argument up with examples. There aren't
1,000 DVD Jon's out there.

[late] Let me reword that: if you can break BD+, you do have something better
to do, and you can charge 250-350/hr to do it.

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albertcardona
What you say makes a lot of sense. And yet I know people who would break the
code as a matter of principle, feel good, and not charge anyone for it.

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tptacek
Name two of them, and then tell me why they haven't done it yet.

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albertcardona
I can do so over a beer, not here. Find me (it's an invitation.)

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mattmaroon
I don't really have much specific knowledge on encryption, but I've heard over
and over that this or that DRM method was "the one", and time after time
they've fallen. It's enough to make me skeptical.

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demallien
I do DRM for a day job, including cracking systems to find their
vulnerabilities (and then patch those vulnerabilities, before the pirtes
exploit them - fun!). TPM is not the same as the other solutions, it really is
a bitch to crack. You're pretty much reduced to reverse enginering the entire
CPU, removing the TPM module, and then fabbing your own unprotected copy of
the CPU. As you can probably imagine, this is not within the reach of a couple
of bored uni students.

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socksandsandals
Well of course it will end piracy. I mean, obviously. Look at how well the TPM
chip stopped the OSX86 project from installing Mac OS X on non-Apple hardware!

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tptacek
The TPM had absolutely nothing to do with OS X's hardware binding. You're
thinking of the SMC.

