41–50 of 111 posts
Despite the shortcomings, I think they are very useful devices from the perspective of running data centers. I consider it useless against evil maid attacks though.
Unfortunately this sounds like a typical pro-Linux rant with the usual scare words such as "Microsoft", "UEFI", "secure boot", etc. To be clear, I am attacking the piece itself, not the author. The reason there is no explicit threat model defined in the TPM specs is because it defines a general-purpose hardware security module. It is up to integrator to define the threat model (TPM's security properties also depend o…
If somebody that wants your data steals your PC he will be likely to find a way to access your personal data. It's a protection against a casual thief that is probably not interested in your data and can't probably even figure out how to bypass the Windows password screen.
But if this doesn't make harm, why not have it? Because having disk encryption enabled by default to a user that doesn't know that is enabled by default is not necessary a good thing. Let's face it: users don't do backups. I know even companies that have all their data on a single server with no backups.
Now if the motherboard breaks and you don't have backup... you can't just take the disk out of that computer, connect to another PC and recover the data. You have lost your data!
But wait, you say Microsoft tought about that, indeed if you signed in with a Microsoft account you can recover your Bitlocker encryption key from the Microsoft portal... wait what? Exactly. No security at all! Microsoft knows your encryption keys and it stores it on their servers... again: false sense of security is worse than no security at all!
Finally, even if this system was 100% secure: do you trust the hardware? The same hardware produced by the same manufacturer of the products where nearly once in a year a big security flaw is discovered? The same hardware where we know that the NSA, and probably other government agencies, placed backdoors?
Whatever, typing a password when booting up the computer (that is once in a day) is such a big deal?
well sure, TPM is mostly about limiting what the average Joe can run on his computer. It isn't meant to stop adversaries.
On the one usage scenario that benefits a PC user, the TPM makes for a really bad yubikey. You can't carry it between computers, you can't back it up, and you are certain to lose it at some point when the computer breaks of gets outdated. That means it either requires a second protocol for authentication, or that you will lose your accounts with all kinds of services all the time.
The TPM covers cases where you want to authenticate the machine , not the user (who'd have a Yubikey they'd carry with them between machines). There are plenty of valid use-cases where you'd want the machine to authenticate itself to services (VPN to enterprise network?) before anyone logs in (or ever logs in, as in the case of servers who operate unattended).
This one is huge: always-on VPNs mean enterprise security mandates don’t delay patching or other remote management tasks just because someone is on vacation or sick, and that stuff can happen at 3am on Sunday rather than when they start work. No more “please leave your computer on overnight” messages.
TPMs can do other useful things besides performing attestation measurements for trusted computing, including acting as a secure element to safeguard and rate-limit keys used for SSH, disk encryption and much more.
Unfortunately this sounds like a typical pro-Linux rant with the usual scare words such as "Microsoft", "UEFI", "secure boot", etc. To be clear, I am attacking the piece itself, not the author. The reason there is no explicit threat model defined in the TPM specs is because it defines a general-purpose hardware security module. It is up to integrator to define the threat model (TPM's security properties also depend o…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
While that's a very good use case, the desired one where you're not allowed to use the Internet unless you're using a big three approved device that can attest you're not using an ad blocker isn't so much.
> he desired one where you're not allowed to use the Internet unless you're using a big three approved device that can attest you're not using an ad blocker isn't so much. There's no reason to believe this will require a TPM or depend on the presence of one. As far as I know, Widewine and similar DRM schemes successfully achieved this without any hardware assistance. Yes, bypasses exist and all the major piracy group…
TPM isn’t about security, it’s about DRM
Unfortunately this sounds like a typical pro-Linux rant with the usual scare words such as "Microsoft", "UEFI", "secure boot", etc. To be clear, I am attacking the piece itself, not the author. The reason there is no explicit threat model defined in the TPM specs is because it defines a general-purpose hardware security module. It is up to integrator to define the threat model (TPM's security properties also depend o…
> This sounds like the rant of a typical Linux fanboy Hi, it's me the Linux fanboy whose entire personality is making Hackintosh and VM apps for iOS. Just a friendly reminder that attacks on the author's credentials have no baring on the weight of the arguments. > The reason there is no explicit threat model defined in the TPM specs is because it defines a general-purpose hardware security module It sounds like you h…
> It sounds like you have zero experience in security :)
Seems like you're countering an ad hominem with an ad hominem here...?
I don't know the TPM specifications in detail myself, but I do know that TPMs are in fact quite general-purpose HSMs, of which assisting in attestation/measurements for the purpose of trusted computing is only one (although certainly the most controversial) subfeature.
If I can store my SSH keys on my TPM and just don't use trusted computing at all... How is that "zero practical security"?
TPM isn’t about security, it’s about DRM
I’ve seen many widely deployed applications of TPM for security, never for DRM.
EDIT: To clarify, Widevine doesn't actually use the TPM, but Widevine L2 uses a TEE for key exchange and decryption, which are all things that modern TPMs support. The use a crypto coprocessor for key exchange and decryption is widely used.