James Carlson wrote: > Most BIOSes have a way to turn that off and due to FUD surrounding the > feature, I suspect pretty much all the customers do. > > It gets worse. Suppose you have multiple CPUs, what do you do? > Should the ID change if you need to swap out a failed CPU? > > The problem is that the CPU itself doesn't really identify the > "chassis" or "host."
I don't see there ever be a PC manufacturer-supplied solution - it seems there's no good hardware that can be used, either because of networking issues (IP/MAC addresses constantly changing), or other hardware disappearing reappearing (CPUs swapped out, etc). It seems to me that the people interested in depending on hardware identification must be the ones who supply the hardware to identify - e.g. the old parallel port dongles, or some smart card solution. If your software needs hardware ID, its up to you to require it and require that it be secure. PC Manufacturers and OS providers can supply the technology in support of it, but ultimately it seems the actual hardware to identify must come from the people who wish to depend on its identity (e.g. ISVs). -jhf-
