Your computer should say what you tell it to say • Hacker News Board

Re: Your computer should say what you tell it to say

#261

Post by Brian_K_White » Thu, Aug 10, 2023, 3:29 PM UTC

Avamander wrote: post #260

Brian_K_White wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are not even merely similar, they are identical. They are both someone else controlling some part of your property, to control your use of the rest of your property. Neither is benign or honest. Neither actually does what the sales pitch claims. The sales pitch is a Sales Pitch. It is what you say when you need to convince someone to do something they normally would not want. Anyone can make up a good sounding s…

> TPM is not merely "safe secret storage", it's someone else's secret used for someone else's purposes Not true, you can use it for your secrets as well. There are many many great use-cases for such secret storage. > one of those purposes is absolutely to "attest" that WEI is valid on this machine at this time. It can be one of the end results. But that's like blaming CPUs for accelerating crypto with AES-NI. > They…

"you can use it for your secrets as well"

There's that sales pitch again.

Why do Linux bootloaders have to get a blessing from Microsoft? Why does even one machine exist that has a bios that lacks the supposedly spec mandated option for the user to install their own keys? Why are there keys preloaded on every machine that the user did not provide? Why do they all come from Microsoft? And why can't the user edit or remove them? Why can't the user decide that the MS keys are invalid and that things signed by them should not be allowed to run?

There are so many ways and proofs that this tech is not what it's sales pitch claims it's not even funny.

I can understand not being aware of the underhanded aspects by simply not being aware of anything about it. I can not understand being aware of what it is and how it works, and still being OK with it and defending it as reasonable, useful, not dishonest at all, and exerting no outside _and superior_ control over what is supposed to be the users own property and actions and associations.

They graciously, most of the time, allow you to also store some keys of your own in their vault they caused to be placed on your machine even if you didn't want it? How magnanimous and generous of them!

Re: Your computer should say what you tell it to say

#262

Post by ColdElectron » Thu, Aug 10, 2023, 3:33 PM UTC

So, what can we actually do about this? The EFF doesn't mention anyone we can talk to. Are we all just waiting around for Google to do it or is there something we can do to raise awareness or campaign against google?

Re: Your computer should say what you tell it to say

#263

Post by Avamander » Thu, Aug 10, 2023, 4:56 PM UTC

Brian_K_White wrote: post #261

Avamander wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> TPM is not merely "safe secret storage", it's someone else's secret used for someone else's purposes Not true, you can use it for your secrets as well. There are many many great use-cases for such secret storage. > one of those purposes is absolutely to "attest" that WEI is valid on this machine at this time. It can be one of the end results. But that's like blaming CPUs for accelerating crypto with AES-NI. > They…

"you can use it for your secrets as well" There's that sales pitch again. Why do Linux bootloaders have to get a blessing from Microsoft? Why does even one machine exist that has a bios that lacks the supposedly spec mandated option for the user to install their own keys? Why are there keys preloaded on every machine that the user did not provide? Why do they all come from Microsoft? And why can't the user edit or re…

> There's that sales pitch again.

It's not a sales pitch, it's a very practical application for a TPM. Easy-to-use LUKS is nothing to scoff at for example. If you can't use it, that's your fault.

> Why do Linux bootloaders have to get a blessing from Microsoft?

Nothing to do with TPMs. The rest of the paragraph is nearly as misguided.

> They graciously, most of the time, allow you to also store some keys of your own in their vault they caused to be placed on your machine even if you didn't want it? How magnanimous and generous of them!

Yeah, it's so bad when you have extra hardware that you can utilize for your own purposes. It really is like blaming AES-NI being used for doing public key encryption with someone else's public key. Nobody should ever have anything they should want securely stored because some other technology out there is used in restrictive ways, sure. Obviously that's not true, you're simply pointing your finger at the wrong thing.