Microsoft Anti-Piracy Feature May Help File Sharers, Study Says

from the unintended-consequences dept

A new study of Microsoft's Palladium technology (that was quietly renamed as Next-Generation Secure Computing Base technology - NGSCB - to make it as hard as possible to remember or to repeat) points out that while the technology includes some features to prevent people from passing on unauthorized software or content, that plan could backfire. This "authorization" feature could be turned around, so that any operator of a file sharing network could authorize everyone who logs on - and then prevent unwanted users on the network. And by "unwanted", they mean folks from the entertainment industry who might be looking to shut down the system or flood it with spoofs or viruses. Of course, I wonder how such authorization works? It's not as if there's any way to prove that the person signing up to use the system doesn't work in the music industry. Also, if ever user is authorized by the system - then there's a central server that has the unique identity of everyone using the system. This would make them an easy target for any entertainment industry lawsuits.