The much maligned “Trusted Computing” idea requires that the party you are supposed to trust deserves to be trusted, and Google is DEFINITELY NOT worthy of being trusted, this is a naked power grab to destroy the open web for Google’s ad profits no matter the consequences, this would put heavy surveillance in Google’s hands, this would eliminate ad-blocking, this would break any and all accessibility features, this would obliterate any competing platform, this is very much opposed to what the web is.

  • Adora 🏳️‍⚧️@beehaw.orgEnglish
    20·
    1 year ago

    I’m a non-techie and don’t understand half of this, but from what I do understand, this is a goddamn nightmare. The world is seriously going to shit.

    • JVT038@feddit.nlEnglish
      39·
      1 year ago

      My ELI5 version:

      Basically, the ‘Web Environment Integrity’ proposal is a new technique that verifies whether a visitor of a website is actually a human or a bot.

      Currently, there are captchas where you need to select all the crosswalks, cars, bicycles, etc. which checks whether you’re a bot, but this can sometimes be bypassed by the bots themselves.

      This new ‘Web Environment Integrity’ thing goes as follows:

      1. You visit a website
      2. Website wants to know whether you’re a human or a bot.
      3. Your browser (or the ‘client’) will send request an ‘environment attestation’ from an ‘attester’. This means that your browser (such as Firefox or Chrome) will request approval from some third-party (like Google or something) and the third-party (which is referred to as ‘attester’) will send your browser a message, which basically says ‘This user is a bot’ or ‘This user is a human being’.
      4. Your browser receives this message and will then send it to the website, together with the ‘attester public key’. The ‘attester public key’ can be used by the website to verify whether the attester (a.k.a. the third-party checking whether you’re a human or not) is trustworthy and will then check whether the attester says that you’re a human or not.

      I hope this clears things up and if I misinterpreted the GitHub explainer, please correct me.

      The reason people (rightfully) worry about this, is because it gives attesters A LOT of power. If Google decides they don’t like you, they won’t tell the website that you’re a human. Or maybe, if Google doesn’t like the website you’re trying to visit, they won’t even cooperate with attesting. Lots of things can go wrong here.

      • HarkMahlberg@kbin.social
        12·
        1 year ago

        Your final paragraph is the real kicker. Google would love nothing more than to be the ONLY trusted Attester and for Chrome to be the ONLY browser that receives the “Human” flag.

        • jarfil@beehaw.org
          2·
          1 year ago

          Too late.

          Microsoft, Apple, and most hardware manufacturers have been the ONLY trusted attester on their own hardware for years already.

          Also Microsoft on most PCs.

      • jarfil@beehaw.orgEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago
        1. You open an app…

        The rest already works like that.

        You can replace Google with Apple, Microsoft, any other hardware manufacturer, or any company hardware attestation software.

    • ricecake@beehaw.orgEnglish
      6·
      1 year ago

      So, a lot of the replies are highlighting how this is “nightmare fuel”.
      I’ll try to provide insight into the “not nightmare” parts.

      The proposal is for how to share this information between parties, and they call out that they’re specifically envisioning it being between the operating system and the website. This makes it browser agnostic in principle.

      Most security exploits happen either because the users computer is compromised, or a sensitive resource, like a bank, can’t tell if they’re actually talking to the user.
      This provides a mechanism where the website can tell that the computer it’s talking to is actually the one running the website, and not just some intermediate, and it can also tell if the end computer is compromised without having access to the computer directly.

      The people who are claiming that this provides a mechanism for user tracking or leaks your browsing history to arrestors are perhaps overreacting a bit.

      I work in the software security sector, specifically with device management systems that are intended to ensure that websites are only accessed by machines managed by the company, and that they meet the configuration guidelines of the company for a computer accessing their secure resources.

      This is basically a generalization of already existing functionality built into Mac, windows, Android and iPhones.

      Could this be used for no good? Sure. Probably will be.
      But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t legitimate uses for something like this and the authors are openly evil.
      This is a draft of a proposal, under discussion before preliminary conversations happen with the browser community.