alt Hacker NewsWeird rant. TPMs are great. The modern computing landscape needs a safe place to put secrets. It's what made the iPhone (Secure Enclave is effectively a TPM) years ahead of Android in terms of security.
The problem isn't the TPM, but attestation. As soon as the TPM is required to not be under your control to get access to Y, bad things happen.
Hell, in actuality, the problem isn't even attestation, its policy. The EU Parliament (the one the people vote for, the Commission are cronies) might eventually force corporations into something more citizen-friendly. Neither Apple, Google or Microsoft is going to drop a market that big.
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Attestation isn't even the problem. I'd love to be able to verify that my server's kernel hasn't been tampered with.
The problem lies in companies like Apple/Google/Microsoft rejecting attestation that they do not control.
People confusing big tech's policy choices with tech features have made "I want my laptop's auth token to only be usable on my laptop" a controversial opinion.
>The modern computing landscape needs a safe place to put secrets.
Does it? Why waste time on developing exploits when you can just call up grandma and get her give you the money by her "own" volition - using her secure device - by pretending to be the bank/IRS/her grand daughter using AI voice/etc.
> TPMs are great.
TPMs are a fucking mess. TPM 2 at least, I’ve worked with it for a few months. I love me some hardware security module, but I want to control it. And if it must be a standard, please please to something like the TKey, so it can be both much simpler than current ad-hoc standards and future proof.
Agreed. Trying to limit progress because it may be misused is attacking the wrong part of the problem and will not work.
TPMs add security against a narrow case of evil maid attacks. They might be useful for corporate computing (for cargo cult compliance purposes more than actual security) but they trojan horse more of "not owning the device you bought" with it to people that don't and shouldn't care about evil maid attacks at all.
Requiring "tokens" stored in "trusted modules" and 7-factor-auth for everything is not progress, it's theater. The biggest achievement of the security orthodoxy was locking me out of my email, by requiring me to read a code sent to my email to log into my email.
I -- literally -- do not care about a single "account" in any "service" I use aside from my email and bank account. Most people would add a few social media accounts to that list.
You don't need a "place to put secrets". Your iPhone app does not do anything important enough to require a "trusted chain" of cryptographic bullshit, just use a password and Google/Apple login.