SMAF Still Hasn't Landed In Linux Kernel, Would Allow Better Protecting Video Playback

[ssokolow]

What's "protected playback"? Sounds like DRM garbage to me.

It's why you can't screenshot movies on a Mac. The video stream is sent, still encrypted, to the Intel Management Engine core, where it's decoded and then encrypted with HDCP before leaving the CPU.

[ssokolow]

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...v5-DMA-BUF-SPD
"The SMAF framework is a Linaro-led project for implementing Secure Data Path (SDP). "
"SDP is a set of hardware features to garanty that some memories regions could only be read and/or write by specific hardware IPs. You can imagine it as a kind of memory firewall which grant/revoke accesses to memory per devices. Firewall configuration must be done in a trusted environment: for ARM architecture we plan to use OP-TEE + a trusted application to do that."

It allows sandboxing a whole hardware device, as long as it is stuff managed by the kernel, Intel's ME and AMD's equivalents are of course not sanboxable.

I know. That's why I said "hope that this can also be useful as a complement to other technologies like the IOMMU".

Just because it can theoretically be used for that doesn't mean that it'll find a practical use outside DRM enforcement.

[Amarildo]

I hope Linux doesn't become DRM infested. Has Linus spoken about this feature yet?

[Ancurio]

Finally, the two distinct meanings of the "DRM" acronym start to converge! (jk)

[starshipeleven]

Just because it can theoretically be used for that doesn't mean that it'll find a practical use outside DRM enforcement.

Theoretically my ass. This is a framework that isn't specific to DRM, and anyone can use for other things too.

The ability to restrict access to hardware or restricting access from hardware is just another security feature.

[Guest]

Well, I'd still support merging it in, if it's not restricted to closed source software and DRM use only. If it can be used for secure playback of user's videos (e.g personal videos, maybe video calls, streaming desktop or game) then it is both useful and welcome.

[pouar]

Probably because no one upstream wants it

[pouar]

probably because no one upstream wants it

[pouar]

probably because no one wants it

[starshipeleven]

Well, I'd still support merging it in, if it's not restricted to closed source software and DRM use only. If it can be used for secure playback of user's videos (e.g personal videos, maybe video calls, streaming desktop or game) then it is both useful and welcome.

It is a framework to restrict application access to a hardware device and a hardware device's access to applications (or whatever isn't their own allocated RAM), DRM is one of the use-cases for it, but it has an obvious use in security and sandboxing too.