Bonum Certa Men Certa

Microsoft's General Manager of 'Trustworthy' Computing Quits as TPM Gets Cracked

[an error occurred while processing this directive]



Summary: More cornerstones of Microsoft's lock-in break apart and Outlook too is suffering from serious issues

DEPARTURES from Microsoft carry on as the company is failing [1, 2, 3, 4]. The latest Microsoft manager to jump ship will add to Amazon poison (many former Microsoft executives are moving there, e.g. [1, 2]), but the most interesting detail was his professional focus at Microsoft:



Microsoft has lost another key employee to Amazon.com. George Stathakopoulos, a computer security expert who'd been with Microsoft for nearly two decades, took a job at Amazon, Microsoft spokesman Lou Gellos confirmed. Stathakopoulos was general manager of the Trustworthy Computing Group at Microsoft and was front and center in Microsoft's efforts to combat the Conficker worm last year.


"Trustworthy Computing Group," eh? What an Orwellian title/name for the group.

For those who have not heard yet, Microsoft's Xbox DRM is going down the loo. Here is one report about the subject (published yesterday):

Hardware hacker Christopher Tarnovsky just wanted to break Microsoft's grip on peripherals for its Xbox 360 game console. In the process, he cracked one of the most heavily fortified chips ever put into a consumer device.

[...]

Its genesis came when Tarnovsky learned that manufacturers of video game controllers had to obtain a license from Microsoft for the peripherals to work on the Xbox 360. The requirement offended his sense of fair play, so he put his reverse engineering muscle to breaking it.

"I was very surprised they would put a security chip in a wired controller, as well as a wireless controller," he said. "It's very monopolistic what they've done. They have a right to do it, but I have a right to break it too."

[...]

Using the tungsten as microscopic bridges, Tarnovsky said, he can digitally clone chips used to prevent piracy of satellite TV service, to disable unauthorized cartridges in printers - or to make Xbox game controllers.

"You could counterfeit this chip," he said, although he stressed he had no plans to use the hack for illegal purposes.


One of our readers "thought that the boot sequence in WinTEL hardware was restricted such that unauthorised software couldn't get on to it," according to mail he sent us last night regarding TPM getting cracked. He adds: "Remember how dual-boot couldn't work anymore if Bitlocker was active? It's called Trusted Platform Module (TPM) and utilised a 'trusted boot pathway'. Why isn't the big story that TPM is broken?"

Well, actually, is it being reported and circulated more widely while we write this. Attempts to put TPM in Linux will hopefully fail too; it's a case of security as lock-in, to use the words of Bill Gates. Our Linux DRM warnings go a while back as it's a curse, not a feature or a blessing. There is a similarity here.

For those who think that Microsoft DRM/TPM is the only thing breaking today, here is another one to have a field day with:

Outlook bug creates monster e-mail files



Microsoft is trying to fix a bug in the e-mail program Outlook 2010 Beta that creates unusually large e-mail files that take up too much space.


They just cannot implement things properly, can they? They also ignore mail storage standards, which helps not at all.

Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

Bloodlust and Love of Blades (Fascination With Murder) Nothing New Among Microsofters
Violence is not a joke and no group is magically entitled to make such "jokes"
Links 01/06/2025: Bird Flu, Food Price Inflation, and Growing US-China Hostilities
Links for the day
Links 01/06/2025: "Vibe Coding" Turns Out to be a Fraud and Amazon Merits Boycott, Argue Bloggers
Links for the day
Gemini Links 01/06/2025: "Stardust" and Ideal PC Setup
Links for the day
Links 01/06/2025: Windows TCO, Openwashing, "It's FOSS" Still Promoting Microsoft
Links for the day
Gemini Links 01/06/2025: Simplification and Networks Everywhere
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, May 31, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, May 31, 2025
Google Bribes EFF. EFF Promotes LLM Slop as 'Fair Use'. To GAFAM It's a Low-Cost Lobby Hedge.
So the bribes pay off ("slush fund") and the word spreads
Slopwatch: Fake Text and Images, Financial Bubbles, and Scams in "Intelligent" Clothing
Sometimes what they mean by "AI" is just cheap labour somewhere else, as we discussed in IRC a few hours ago
Why Microsoft is Collapsing (Similar to What's Happening at IBM), As Insiders See It
IBM seems like one heck of a mess
Reliable Computing Means Free (Libre) Computing
Sites that want to promote security ought to deal with the biggest issues
Links 31/05/2025: US Court Orders Sides With RFE/RL, War Updates From Ukraine
Links for the day
Gemini Links 31/05/2025: ARM Server and power_supply Subsystem
Links for the day
Links 31/05/2025: Slop Stigmatised as Disinformation, Catalyst/Driver of "Death of Communication"
Links for the day
Common Sense 101: Do Not Write Blog Posts Saying You Want to Murder Colleagues (or Yourself)
Only crazy people would think stabbings are a joke
Microsoft Bankruptcy
"Microsoft unit in Russia to file for bankruptcy, database shows"
Techrights Does Not Compete With LLM Slop, It Exposes the Bastards, Plagiarists and Scammers Who Do That
People like Scam Altman, still facing a lawsuit from his own sister for sexual abuse against her
Links 31/05/2025: Microsoft-Connected Builder.ai is a Fraud and US is Purging Students Based on Race/Nationality
Links for the day
Gemini Links 30/05/2025: Limmat, Doomscrollers, and Arguments Parsing
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, May 30, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, May 30, 2025
The "AI" (Slop) Bubble Already Popped, But It's Not an Overnight Collapse
where Microsoft put its money
No More Steven Astorino at IBM, Chatter About Weekly/Nonstop Layoffs at IBM
What happened? Good luck guessing.
Looking at Corruption in Europe, Going Beyond the EPO
Expect a new series to kick off very soon
Slopwatch: Security SPAM and LLM Slop for SEO and FUD Purposes, Perpetually Tarnishing the Perception of Linux and (Open)SSH Security
A lot of this Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt (FUD) comes from Microsoft and its LLMs
Links 30/05/2025: Google's LLM Slop Pushers Are Killing Journalism and Shira Perlmutter Fails to Stop Bribed Regime From Legalising Plagiarism (in "AI" Clothing)
Links for the day
Links 30/05/2025: Offline Arts and "Threshold of Patience"
Links for the day
Signing Off Serious Lies With a Statement of Truth is No Joking Matter
It's not hard to see what's happening here
Links 30/05/2025: LLM Slop Already Ingests and Vomits Its Own Garbage, Facebook Exec Admits Copyrights a Concern Too
Links for the day
Mass Layoffs at Microsoft Result in More Whistleblowers From Microsoft
Microsoft's predatory pricing is further
Slopwatch: Planet Ubuntu Became LLM Slop and Some People Fail to See the Immorality of Plagiarism
it lessens the incentive for people to publish real articles
EPO Poll: 68% Dissatisfied With Quality of Slop (Wrongly Framed as "AI") for Patent Classification
Slop does not work, it's just falsely advertised with extra hype (funded by slop pushers that sponsor the major media)
Big Crowds Gather to Learn About Software Freedom From the Man Who Started GNU/Linux in 1983
"It was a great success"
Microsoft Layoffs Again in Bay Area
Microsoft relies on people's false belief that being "in LinkedIn" will get you a job; well, seems like even working inside LinkedIn really sucks and you lose the job
Gemini Links 30/05/2025: Fighting Against the Bad News, and Slop is Dehumanisation Disguised as "Intelligence"
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, May 29, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, May 29, 2025