> Which has two flaws. First, it wasn't a challenge for them, they were just using it as an excuse to whine about the second one that actually is. And second, the only real security is math (encryption), but it doesn't require any special support from the hardware.
They bought a hack from another company for an old model of phone. If the case had been involving the latest model handset, the vendor claimed they had not yet (but were confident they would) hack it.
> The problem is, if someone has physical access to your device and can compromise your firmware, they can record your passphrase the next time you unlock the device, and then they don't need to break the encryption.
And if the device is tamper-resistant? I had this same conversation with a person who hated Yubikey. Nearly exactly the same. It made even less sense, because the entire point of the Yubikey is to be tamper proof.
> The only answer to these attacks is physical security. Secure boot does nothing.
I think maybe what I object to most is that essentially the only attacks considered in this discourse are attacks directly by nation-states at scale. Not only is it clear that handsets and self-built computers are subject to these (at scale), but it's doubly not sure that if you used a TPM then you wouldn't be exposed to attacks against TPM-backdoored devices since your information in an online world is stored on commodity clouds that probably DO have that hardware and if an attack exists, it'll certainly be able to ignore FDE.
Even if we ignore that, TPM mitigates real attacks we see in the real world, and increases the difficulty of those attacks. Average consumers are a case that should be considered in the discourse.
Most people can't effectively harden themselves against nation-state level attacks (if only because incarceration and interrogation exist and even physical security won't stop them), but nation-state level attacks involving a conspiracy amongst manufacturers and the NSA is the justification used to discredit the use of TPMs.
And for the dubious benefit of saying, "Well I have a spec and presumably this board is fully defined by this spec." Of course, truly verifying the board has no back doors is not made substantially easier by the absence of a TPM. So I have trouble believing that this is not an argument among different factions who want final say on a wide variety of consumer hardware.