90 Vista protects users from their own multimedia content
Monday 13th August, 2007
Amazingly, Windows Vista's content protection will protect it's users from seeing their own multimedia content.
"If there was any threat modeling at all, it was really badly done," Gutmann, from the University of Auckland, New Zealand, said while giving a talk on Vista content protection. "Once the enemy is the user and not the attacker, standard security thinking falls apart."
It's a strange world were people cannot play their HD-DVDs or listen to their own music:
While Microsoft's intent is to protect commercial content, home movies are increasingly being shot in high definition, Gutmann said. Many users are finding they can't play any content if it's considered "premium."
"This is not commercial HD content being blocked, this is the users' own content," Gutmann said. "The more premium content you have, the more output is disabled."
People actually pay money to be treated like this.