Intel Introduced Doubtful Security Plan

After Chipzilla had bought the worldwide-known insecurity company McAfee, lots of industry experts wondered why, and recently Intel finally released the results of its collaboration.

Intel has developed a security system called Deepsafe. According to the giant, this system will work outside the operating system at the chip level, watching the hardware for signs of malware being active. The system in question is expected to be quite good at tackling rootkit malware attacks, because they also happen outside the operating system. For example, McAfee’s own threat report quoted the statistics which mentioned the number of rootkit infections discovered in the 6 months of this year being up 32% year-on-year.

At the same time, media reports revealed that the industry observers aren’t quite sure that the new idea of the company will make much difference in this field. For instance, Wendy Nather, which works as a security analyst from the 451 Group and is also known as a former IT security director at UBS, explained that Intel has actually had the security modules the new system is based on in their chipset for a while now. The only problem is that venders could not be even bothered to use them, as this demands development where they thought there was not much market interest.

The security system updates would be a bit more disruptive than the current security software patches – in fact, it would be more about changing the foundations of a building from underneath it. As for the first McAfee product based on this security system, it is Deep Defender, and it’ll be out there in the stores in the beginning of 2012. Wendy Nather pointed out that Intel is simply doing the same things as McAfee has already been doing now and moving them into the chipset. As you can understand, this doesn’t sound too exciting.

Meanwhile, the real area in which chip-level security would be very interesting is embedded systems. This is because they are being used virtually everywhere – from smart meters to mobile devices, in which, as you know, a lot of money are being invested in order to secure them. In short words, Deepsafe is a system which softly hints that the technology isn’t actually being targeted at personal computers at all. Instead, it can mean Intel’s move into the mobile market.

Sony Turned To Rootkits Again?

Sony’s problems with PlayStation 3 began when its root keys were discovered and published in the Internet. Today the company is making another effort to fight against jailbreakers – the rumors are that Sony is using the latest firmware update to upload rootkit on to the console in order to spy on users.

In fact, it seems like the troubles of 2005 are all over again. 6 years ago Sony tried to curb music piracy of its albums, encoding the CDs with the infamous SunnComm/MediaMaxx technology, which was highly questionable under law. Actually, the mentioned technology installed a rootkit on to users’ PCs, unable to be detected by any anti-virus and anti-spyware software. Once this was discovered in the technology, virus writers simply hid their malware in rootkits and anti-virus software had no power against it. In other words,

Sony’s protections schemes went too far, which led to litigation in many countries. Finally, by 2007, the lawsuits against the company were settled.

Now the situation is similar: after the root keys to Sony’s PS3 had been posted online by a user nicknamed GeoHot, it became clear that games not authorized by the company can now be played. The company required that the tools used to find the root keys be handed over, but the user said it makes no sense because the keys are now public.

Although it seemed like there’s little Sony can do about it, it was wrong. CNet suggested that the company has been distributing a new firmware update, which is reported to contain rootkit technology, again. It would spy on users’ consoles to make sure they are playing only authorized games. Meanwhile, the report of CNet mentions that Sony has yet to activate this code.

If it is really so, this could cause more legal problems for the company. First of all, the very idea that some piece of software could spy on gamers will raise several legal privacy concerns. So far it is doubtful that such technology would be legal in the United States. Meanwhile, Canada has even tougher privacy laws, which also decreases the chances of such scheme being legal. By the way, privacy concerns became a huge problem for the company in Canada 6 years ago.

Actually, it’s really quite striking that the company might even consider choose this way again. If Sony really decides to try this, it would have to go over privacy legislation in every country to ensure it isn’t breaking any laws, at the very least.