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RSS feedsPalladium, the latest security initiative from Microsoft announced last week, has come under fire from privacy advocates, and the company has received a stern warning from the European Union (EU).
Earlier this week, EU antitrust enforcer Philip Lowe warned Microsoft that Palladium must be compatible with other operating systems and not shut out rivals by ensuring that "competitors have the capacity to offer the range of services they want to provide".
Lowe is due to become general director for competition for the EU in September.
Palladium project manager Mario Juarez has pledged that, while Palladium is still in the early development stages, the hardware specifications will be disclosed to competitors.
But critics have accused the software giant of developing a "Microsoft enhanced" version of the Trustworthy Computing Platform Alliance (TCPA), which was founded in 1999 by Hewlett Packard, Compaq, Intel, IBM and Microsoft.
Ross Anderson, of Cambridge University, said: "According to my spies in the hardware industry, Palladium is TCPA - with some M$ software enhancements."
In a recent paper presented to the Open Source Software Economics forum in Toulouse on 20 June, Anderson drew attention to the fact that the TCPA, which claims to be making the next-generation PC more secure, is actually making it more secure for the PC and software vendors rather than for users.
He explained that, while such initiatives could tighten security and help in the battle against piracy, they could also help lock users into certain vendors because of their foundations in digital rights management systems.
Application vendors could control cross-platform compatibility with security mechanisms rather than file formats.
"If Palladium works - or even if vanilla TCPA works - it will create some novel and very powerful tools. We need to think carefully about not just the good uses, but the bad ones," said Anderson.
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