News Bytes
Is Your Laptop Trustworthy?
If it doesn’t have a TPM (trusted platform module) chip
on the motherboard, then it may not be trustworthy.
According to Atmel ( www.atmel.com) — which has sold
over 5,000,000 of its AT97SC3201 TPM integrated circuits
for installation on laptops — the hardware implementation
of digital security is the future.
A TPM chip interacts with both the OS and application
software to digitally sign Email and store both passwords
and encryption keys in a memory space that is not on the
hard drive — and is thus inaccessible to malicious
programs. TPM security is based on an industrial standard
developed by the Trusted Computing Group (TCG) and
includes support for fast 2048-bit RSA crypto acceleration,
true random number generation, secure EEPROM storage,
and tamper prevention circuitry that disables the chip if
illegal snooping is detected.
The services of TPM hardware may become the
next “killer app” as ways are sought to quench spam
Email and protect user privacy on the Internet. More
information on TCG principles is available online:
www.trustedcomputinggroup.org
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Why, It’s Wafer Thin!
Most of us are used to the
compact flash (CF) cards in
our portable MP3 players and digital
cameras. Every six months or so,
some newspaper advertisement
offers a 2x jump in size for the same
$150.00 — a trend that seems to be
without end.
Well, did you know you can just
leapfrog toward the endgame with
Hitachi’s 3K4 Microdrive product? If
you’ve never heard of it, the 3K4 —
offered in two and four gigabyte
capacities — is the same physical size
as CF media, but it’s a real spinning
hard disc!
Users of high-performance digital
cameras report that the write time is
slower than that of solid-state CF
media, so it may not be suitable for
some users.
For the rest of us, though — viola!
There’s even a way to get it on
the cheap. Wired News online
( www.wired.com) reports that the
$200.00 MuVo2 portable MP3 player
from Creative Technology uses
the four gigabyte size Microdrive.
So, if you’re in the mood to
cannibalize this unit — you can save
about $300.00. Not bad for a
opportunity to take something apart
— without even having to put it back
together.
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Circle #85 on the Reader Service Card.
MAY 2004
