Palladium: technical limits and implications

[Ben Laurie]

AARG!Anonymous wrote:
> Adam Back writes:
> 
>>I have one gap in the picture: 
>>
>>In a previous message in this Peter Biddle said:
>>
>>
>>>In Palladium, SW can actually know that it is running on a given
>>>platform and not being lied to by software. [...] (Pd can always be
>>>lied to by HW - we move the problem to HW, but we can't make it go
>>>away completely).
>>
> 
> Obviously no application can reliably know anything if the OS is hostile.
> Any application can be meddled with arbitrarily by the OS.  In fact
> every bit of the app can be changed so that it does something entirely
> different.  So in this sense it is meaningless to speak of an app that
> can't be lied to by the OS.
> 
> What Palladium can do, though, is arrange that the app can't get at
> previously sealed data if the OS has meddled with it.  The sealing
> is done by hardware based on the app's hash.  So if the OS has changed
> the app per the above, it won't be able to get at old sealed data.

I don't buy this: how does Palladium know what an app is without the OS' 
help?

Cheers,

Ben.

-- 
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