I have a 7950X, a pile of RAM, and an unfairly expensive RTX 4000-series GPU. The cursor occasionally hitches for ~400ms whenever doing things like opening task manager or resuming from the lock screen, so that checks out unfortunately.
Unless something changed in the specification since I read it last, the attested environment payload only contains minimal information. The only information the browser is required to send about the environment is that: this browser is {{the browser ID}}, and it is not being used by a bot (e.g. headless Chrome) or automated process.
Depending on how pedantic people want to be about the definition of DRM, that makes it both DRM and not DRM. It’s DRM in the sense that it’s “technology to control access to copyrighted material” by blocking bots. But, it’s not DRM in the sense that it “enables copyright holders and content creators to manage what users can do with their content.”
It’s the latter definition that people colloquially know DRM as being. When they’re thinking about DRM and its user-hostility, they’re thinking about things like Denuvo, HDCP, always-online requirements, and soforth. Technologies that restrict how a user interacts with content after they download/buy it.
Calling web environment integrity “DRM” is at best being pedantic to a definition that the average person doesn’t use, and at worst, trying to alarm/incite/anger readers by describing it using an emotionally-charged term. As it stands right now, once someone is granted access to content gated behind web environment integrity, they’re free to use it however they want. I can load a website that enforces WEI and run an adblocker to my heart’s content, and it can’t do anything to stop that once it serves me the page. It can’t tell the browser to disable extensions, and it can’t enforce integrity of the DOM.
That’s not to say it’s harmless or can’t be turned into user-hostile DRM later, though. There’s a number of privacy, usability, ethical, and walled-garden-ecosystem concerns with it right now. If it ever gets to widespread implementation and use, they could later amend it to require sending an extra field that says “user has an adblocker installed”. With that knowledge, a website could refuse to serve me the page—and that would be restricing how I use the content in the sense that my options then become their way (with disabled extensions and/or an unmodified DOM) or the highway.
The whole concept of web environment integrity is still dubious and reeks of ulterior motives, but my belief is that calling it “DRM” undermines efforts to push back against it. If the whole point of its creation is to lead way to future DRM efforts (as the latter definition), having a crowd of people raising pitchforks over something they incorrectly claim it does it just gives proponents of WEI an excuse to say “the users don’t know what they’re talking about” and ignore our feedback as being mob mentality. Feedback pointing out current problems and properly articulating future concerns is a lot harder to sweep under the rug.
Thank you for making an informative and non-alarmist website around the topic of Web Environment Integrity.
I’ve seen (and being downvoted for arguing against) so many articles, posts, and comments taking a sensationalized approach to the discussion around it, and it’s nice to finally see some genuine and wholly factual coverage of it.
I really can’t understate how much I appreciate your efforts towards ethical reporting here. You guys don’t use alarm words like “DRM,” and you went through the effort of actually explaining both what WEI does and how it poses a risk for the open web. Nothing clickybaity, ragebaity, and you don’t frame it dishonesty. Just a good, objective description of what it is in its current form and how that could be changed to everything people are worried about.
Is there anything that someone like me could help contribute with? It seems like our goals (informing users without inciting them, so they can create useful feedback without FUD and misinformation) align, and I’d love to help out any way I can. I read the (at the time incomplete) specs and explainer for WEI, and I could probably write a couple of paragraphs going over what they promised or omitted. If you check my post history, I also have a couple of my own example of how the WEI spec could be abused to harm users.
In other posts, I’ve tried to point out how some of the articles and comments around WEI are more speculative than factual and received downvotes and accusations of boot-licking for it. Welcome to the club, I guess.
The speculation isn’t baseless, but I’m concerned about the lack of accurate information about WEI in its current form. If the majority of people believe WEI is immediately capable of enforcing web page integrity, share that incorrect fact around, and incite others, it’s going to create a very good excuse for dismissing all dissenting feedback of WEI as FUD. The first post linking to the GitHub repository brought in so many pissed off/uninformed people that the authors of the proposal actually locked the repo issues, preventing anyone else from voicing their concerns or providing examples of how implementing the specification could have unintended or negative consequences.
Furthermore, by highlighting the DRM and anti-adblock aspect of WEI, it’s failing to give proper attention to many of the other valid concerns like:
I very well could be wrong, but I think our (the public) opinions would have held more weight if they were presented in a rational, informed, and objective manner. Talking to software engineers as people generally goes down better than treating them like emotionless cogs in the corporate machine, you know?
Can’t have a runtime error if you don’t have a compiled binary *taps forehead*
(For the record, I say this as someone who enjoys Rust)
I hope you were being sarcastic, because, ideally, nobody implements this.
Good article. Not clickbait/ragebait, and it explains the specification simply and succinctly, while also demonstrating why it’s dangerous for the open web.
I’m not a lawyer, nor do I have the full context of the legislation you’re quoting, but my interpretation of that paragraph is that it only applies to aircrafts that are carrying passengers.
. . . in the air space in possession of another, by a person who is traveling in an aircraft, is privileged . . .
You’re the one who does this for a hobby, though. I’m sure that you know the laws more than I do :)
From what I can tell, that’s basically what this is trying to do. Some company can sign a source image, then other companies can sign the changes made to the image. You can see that the image was created by so-and-so and then manipulated by so-and-other-so, and if you trust them both, you can trust the authenticity of the image.
It’s basically git commit signing for images, but with the exclusionary characteristics of certificate signing (for their proposed trust model, at least. It could be used more like PGP, too).
I glossed through some of the specifications, and it appears to be voluntary. In a way, it’s similar to signing git commits: you create an image and chose to give provenance to (sign) it. If someone else edits the image, they can choose to keep the record going by signing the change with their identity. Different images can also be combined, and that would be noted down and signed as well.
So, suppose I see some image that claims to be an advertisement for “the world’s cheapest car”, a literal rectangle of sheet metal and wooden wheels. I could then inspect the image to try and figure out if that’s a legitimate product by BestCars Ltd, or if someone was trolling/memeing. It turns out that the image was signed by LegitimateAdCompany, Inc and combined signed assets from BestCars, Ltd and StockPhotos, LLC. Seeing that all of those are legitimate businesses, the chain of provenance isn’t broken, and BestCars being known to work with LegitimateAdCompany, I can be fairly confident that it’s not a meme photo.
Now, with that being said…
It doesn’t preclude scummy camera or phone manufacturers from generating identities unique their customers and/or hardware and signing photos without the user’s consent. Thankfully, at least, it seems like you can just strip away all the provenance data by copy-pasting the raw pixel data into a new image using a program that doesn’t support it (Paint?).
All bets are off if you publish or upload the photo first, though—a perceptual hash lookup could just link the image back to original one that does contain provenance data.
Had to give up at rule 20 because I was using a phone.
As much fun pain as that was, highlighting with a touch screen is nowhere near fast enough to put out the fire.
Would love to see a speedrun leaderboard for this, though.
“Impede the replacement of” and “compatible battery” has a lot of room for interpretation. I hope they’re defined explicitly somewhere, or else we’re going to find implementations that effectively restrict non-OEM batteries while still adhering to the letter of the law.
For example, all batteries lacking a cryptographically-verified “certification” handshake could have safety restrictions such as:
Limited maximum amperage draw, achieved by under-clocking the SoC and sleeping performance cores.
Lower thermal limits while charging the device, meaning fast charging may be limited or preemptively disabled to ensure that the battery does not exceed an upper threshold of you-might-want-to-put-it-in-the-fridge degrees.
Disabling wireless charging capabilities, just in case magnetic induction affects the uncertified battery full of unknown and officially-untested components.
A pop-up warning the user every time the device is plugged into or unplugged from a charger.
All of that would technically meet the condition insofar that it’s neither impeding the physical replacement nor rendering the device inoperable, but it would still effectively make the phone useless unless you pay for a (possibly-overpriced) OEM part.
If they explicitly defined “Impede the replacement of” as “prevent replacement of or significantly alter user experience as a result of replacing,” and “compatible battery” as “electrically-compatible battery” all those cases would be covered.
Might be a bit of cynical take, but I don’t have too much faith in the spirit of the law being adhered to when profits are part of the equation.
You say that like it hasn’t been happening already for two decades.
https://www.cnet.com/news/privacy/fbi-taps-cell-phone-mic-as-eavesdropping-tool/
I can’t read French so I only have others’ translations and intepretations to rely on, but from what I understand, the differences here are that,
France lawmakers are being direct with their legislation, rather than relying on precedence or judges’ interpretations of anti-terrorism or national security bills; and
Privileged conversations (e.g. between client and attorney) can still be admissible when recorded surreptitiously this way.
Apparently it would still need to be pre-approved by a judge. That doesn’t inspire much confidence in it not being hand-wave allowed, though.
If that were the case, wouldn’t the mouse jump when the latest frame is presented? For me, it’s more that it just stays still until after Windows stops having a fuss.