Potential problem with Vista

[ipatent]

Security expert Bruce Schneier has some interesting information on a potentially troublesome Vista featurein his blog...

Windows Vista includes an extensive reworking of core OS elements in order to provide content protection for so-called "premium content", typically HD data from Blu-Ray and HD-DVD sources. Providing this protection incurs considerable costs in terms of system performance, system stability, technical support overhead, and hardware and software cost.

Once a weakness is found in a particular driver or device, that driver will have its signature revoked by Microsoft, which means that it will cease to function (details on this are a bit vague here, presumably some minimum functionality like generic 640x480 VGA support will still be available in order for the system to boot). This means that a report of a compromise of a particular driver or device will cause all support for that device worldwide to be turned off until a fix can be found.

I don't like the sound of this..

[tomh009]

First, it's not Peter Scheier's writing -- he's just quoting Peter Gutmann from the University of Auckland.

I read through Gutmann's document, and while he has some valid points, others are, err, rather exaggerated. For example, he uses some quites (mostly from ATI) in his analysis:

"Drivers must be extra-robust. Requires additional driver development to isolate and protect sensitive code paths" -- ATI.

Even if there is an extra cost to extra-robust drivers, I (and many others, I suspect) would be willing to pay it. I have made hardware choices based on drivers!

"Cannot go to market until it works to specification... potentially more respins of hardware" -- ATI.

Can't go to market until the products work? And this is bad?

My personal view is that this is turning a molehill into a mountain ...