Defense and intelligence alums, including former Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci, are marketing a copy-protection system that works by taking control of your computer. Try to hack InTether, the creators say, and it destroys your documents.
A small Austin start-up run by intelligence community alums is parachuting into the burgeoning, post-Napster, copy-protection market with a remarkably thin, invisible software product that claims to offer nearly invincible armor for music, video, film and e-books alike. But the most remarkable part is, it fights back at would-be pirates. ''If you try to hack it, it destroys itself,'' explains company CEO George Friedman. Hasta la vista, John Perry Barlow! |
Friedman's company, Infraworks Corporation, has its roots in the military, where the operating motto certainly has never been ''Information Wants to Be Free,'' but something along the lines of ''Loose Lips Sink Ships.'' Infraworks is chaired by former Secretary of Defense and National Security Adviser Frank Carlucci, who also chairs The Carlyle Group merchant bank and Nortel Networks, the global communications firm. Friedman's own background is ''in intelligence and computer security,'' he says. The author of books on business intelligence and the use of technology in warfare, Friedman currently chairs the business intelligence Web site Stratfor.com (intelligence-speak for strategic forecasting).
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The InTether system consists of a packager, used by the originator of a file, and a receiver, used by the recipient. The packager enables a publisher, record label, movie studio -- or, for that matter, a law firm, doctor's office, bank or anyone else who wants information security -- to impose a set of restrictions on almost any digital file. InTether, Friedman says, works equally well with, for instance, Word, Adobe Acrobat, Lotus or Excel documents, e-books, music, video or photographic files.
Using the packaging software, the originator can determine how many times the recipient can view or play the file; whether the recipient can alter it and send it to others; the identity of permissible recipients (determined by ID numbers and passwords); whether the file can be printed freely, once, or never; how long the file can be viewed or played (in hours and minutes); the date on which the file can first be opened; and the date on which, if the originator wishes, the file will self-destruct and vanish from the recipient's hard drive. (Version 2.0, one hopes, will offer simulated smoke and sizzling sounds for the full Mission: Impossible experience.)
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But if the hacker persists, and continues making ''aggressive'' attempts to disable InTether's defenses or pierce its vault, he'll get what Friedman calls ''the white screen of death.'' His InTether receiver, together with all the InTethered files stored inside it, will be destroyed. Attacks ''would have to be pretty aggressive and multiple'' in order to trigger the white screen of death, Friedman says, not so reassuringly.
In any event, a successful hack would not be irreversible, the way the cracking of the DVD scrambling system appears to have been. ''We expect it to be hacked,'' Friedman says, ''but it's upgradeable. We expect to update the product regularly. We'll give customers an upgraded version, and the recipient has to upgrade. If he refuses, he can't open the new data.''
Seeeems to good to be true ! But not for the customers...
Source: Inside.com
