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I'm comfortable with it on SmartCards or EMV chips, since those are tailored devices for a specific purpose and the trust model is understood by the participant

I'm comfortable with it on SmartCards or EMV chips, since those are tailored devices for a specific purpose and the trust model is understood by the participants. I'm not particularly upset that I can't root my credit card. Mobile phones, it's disappointing, but total consumer control was kind of a lost cause from day 1. What truly bothers me is the introduction of trusted computing into general-purpose consumer CPUs, where previously we had complete freedom. There's an old but still very good CCC talk that encapsulates my feelings about this [0]. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUEvRyemKSg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUEvRyemKSg

lxgr 6y ago
Just to better understand your line of reasoning: Do you generally equate trusted computing with elevated privileges for the attestable code being executed? I think this is where a lot of trust (on a meta-level) in the technology has been lost, and as far as I understand it, modern implementations are, on the contrary, tightly sandboxed. In that sense, modern trusted computing can actually be more freedom preserving: If you are generally willing to tolerate DRM on your system, as long as it's not able to access data on your computer that are none of its business, you're more likely to see that happen on a modern, hardware-assisted DRM platform than on the rootkit based software shenanigans of the early 2000s.
- akersten 6y ago
  Elevated privileges for a hardware blob is an even worse situation that unfortunately exists (Intel ME/AMD PSP). For me the issue is the blob itself. "Trusted" for the manufacturer is "trust us" for the end-user. My expectation for a general-purpose CPU is that I can inspect the code that's running on it. Building a TPM into consumer CPUs defies that freedom. So, it's about hackability (in the Hacker News sense). If you can't see what's happening inside of your computer, is it really yours?
kohtatsu 6y ago
Non-Google link: https://media.ccc.de/v/28c3-4848-en-the_coming_war_on_general_computation https://media.ccc.de/v/28c3-4848-en-the_coming_war_on_genera...

lxgr 6y ago

Just to better understand your line of reasoning: Do you generally equate trusted computing with elevated privileges for the attestable code being executed? I think this is where a lot of trust (on a meta-level) in the technology has been lost, and as far as I understand it, modern implementations are, on the contrary, tightly sandboxed. In that sense, modern trusted computing can actually be more freedom preserving: If you are generally willing to tolerate DRM on your system, as long as it's not able to access data on your computer that are none of its business, you're more likely to see that happen on a modern, hardware-assisted DRM platform than on the rootkit based software shenanigans of the early 2000s.

akersten 6y ago
Elevated privileges for a hardware blob is an even worse situation that unfortunately exists (Intel ME/AMD PSP). For me the issue is the blob itself. "Trusted" for the manufacturer is "trust us" for the end-user. My expectation for a general-purpose CPU is that I can inspect the code that's running on it. Building a TPM into consumer CPUs defies that freedom. So, it's about hackability (in the Hacker News sense). If you can't see what's happening inside of your computer, is it really yours?

kohtatsu 6y ago

Non-Google link: https://media.ccc.de/v/28c3-4848-en-the_coming_war_on_general_computation https://media.ccc.de/v/28c3-4848-en-the_coming_war_on_genera...